(#4521) Joe Manchin is finally coming around

      The biggest vote we democrats will have this year is not the infrastructure bill, nor the police reform bill. It is the voting rights bill and Joe Manchin is getting onboard with a good chunk of it. In fact Senators Ed Markey and Amy Klobuchar are going to work with Manchin to get an outline for a bill that all 50 liberal senators can get behind. This is important because if a voting rights bill is not passable in the regular order with the filibuster then it may be easier at that point to get all 50 liberal senators to carve out of the filibuster an exception that deals specifically with voting rights issues.
     It is almost a certainty at this point that the republicans in the senate will cast no votes for a voting rights bill because if they do they will be certain to lose in the midterm elections coming in 18 moths if the bill is passed. So the need for all 50 liberal senators to at least agree on a bill will make it far easier for them to then move for a carve out of the filibuster, which is the compromise to actually eliminating the filibuster. I am anxiously awaiting to see the outcome of the weekend work product that Klobuchar, Markey, and Manchin produce. I have no doubt that it will be close to the House/Senate-1 bill and that is encouraging.
     I had hoped to see Manchin come around earlier but in retrospect, it seems that the strategy of negotiating with the unnegotiable was needed and Manchin coming around is perfectly timed. There are no more excuses to be used about the effort for bipartisanship. There will be no bipartisanship from republicans and Manchin is now well versed in it. The problem with republicans is that they still think they are the majority and they can't seem to grapple with the fact that they are not in control. So their position on negotiating is that they want their demands met despite the fact that their demands are not in line with the majority position and can be dismissed altogether.