joe manchin sotu intv 3/7/21
Sen. Joe Manchin explains why he wanted changes to relief bill
01:26 - Source: CNN

Editor’s Note: Lauren A. Wright is an associate research scholar and lecturer in politics and public affairs at Princeton University. She has written two books on presidential politics. Follow her on Twitter @drlaurenawright. The views expressed in this commentary are her own. View more opinion on CNN.

CNN  — 

A lot of Democrats are mad at Sen. Joe Manchin.

Lauren A. Wright

The Democrat from West Virginia drew the wrath of his party this weekend when he nearly torpedoed the Democrats’ $1.9 trillion coronavirus relief package over an unemployment benefit tax provision he claimed was a surprise. It was not the first time in recent weeks that Manchin has been singled out by members of his own party, who have criticized him for his hesitation to embrace progressive positions on issues ranging from abolishing the filibuster to defunding the police.

But wholesale condemnation of Manchin, either by other lawmakers or progressive advocates who disagree with him, fails to acknowledge the clear net benefits of having a Democratic senator represent one of the most solidly Republican states in the country, where, according to Gallup, conservatives outnumber liberals by an almost a three-to-one margin.

If Democrats want to dominate the legislative agenda, they ought to focus on winning new seats, not attacking established moderates. And the relevant question is not whether Manchin always votes the way the typical Democrat wishes, but whether he does so more often than the Republican senator who would almost surely replace him if he ignored West Virginia politics.

It is not hard to understand why Manchin votes the way he does. As congressional scholar David Mayhew famously put it, members of Congress are “single-minded seekers of reelection.” Like all other senators, his behavior is largely explained by the ideological makeup of his state.

Manchin himself makes no secret of this fact. When Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York recently took Manchin, as well as another moderate Democratic US senator, Kyrsten Sinema, to task over their opposition to a $15 federal minimum wage, stating that “two people in this entire country” were holding Democrats back from progress for working people, Manchin responded that he and Ocasio-Cortez “come from two different areas of the country that have different social and cultural needs.” Instead, he proposed an increase to $11, then indexing for inflation, which he argued was more commensurate with the needs of his state.

Indeed, it is worth emphasizing that as senators, Manchin and Sinema face entirely different political pressures than Ocasio-Cortez by nature of their chamber. Even in Arizona, where Democrats are starting to catch up to the roughly three percentage point Republican voter registration advantage, Sinema must appeal to a broad swath of millions of voters statewide in order to keep her seat, rather than a hyper-specific district where Democratic control is nearly impenetrable.

This means that to stay in office Manchin, like Sinema, sometimes has to oppose Democratic proposals, or at least hem and haw before he finally comes around to supporting them. For example, when Manchin briefly wavered on voting for Biden’s nominee for Interior Secretary, Rep. Deb Haaland, Twitter users blasted his considerations as “shameful” and derided his “wishy washy” proclivities. But the fact that Democrats ended up with a “yes” vote on a staunchly pro-environment nominee from a senator who represents the second-largest coal-producing state in the country should be the real headline.

Perhaps, most importantly, focusing on the few votes where moderate Democratic senators like Manchin and Sinema diverge from their colleagues obscures the vast majority of cases in which they vote with their party. It’s true that Manchin voted with former President Donald Trump more often than any other senate Democrat – about 33% of the time in the 116th Congress, compared to Sinema’s 23%, according to a FiveThirtyEight analysis.

But Democrats still make headway on caucus priorities when these swing seats are filled by Democrats rather than Republicans. The strict party-line vote on Biden’s Covid relief plan demonstrated the fate the bill would have met in a Manchin-less Senate.

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    The progressive upheaval over moderate Democrats reflects a broader failure by the party to recognize political realities and strategize accordingly. Despite the obvious headwinds, Kentucky Democratic senate candidate Amy McGrath raised $96 million trying to unseat Mitch McConnell in 2020 (her campaign spent nearly $91 million compared to McConnell’s $60 million). The result? Absolutely nothing. McConnell predictably sailed through reelection by almost 20 percentage points in Kentucky, where he is widely recognized as an effective political operator who brings resources and attention to his state through his leadership position. Democrats would likely have been much better off investing that money in winnable congressional races where they could have better protected their now slim majority in the House.

    Of course, it is easy to understand Democratic frustration with foot-dragging on their own side of the aisle now that they have unified government for the first time since 2010. But in the process of disparaging their own members, Democrats may make it easier for Republicans to replace those members the next time around. After all, President Joe Biden did not get Manchin back on board with the coronavirus relief package by castigating him on Twitter. He told him to vote his conscience, with a seasoned first-hand understanding and respect for the critical role of the median vote in the chamber he once served.