How Joe Manchin Knifed the Democrats -- and Bailed on Saving Democracy

[Nevilledog]

Link to tweet

https://www.rollingstone.com/politics/politics-features/joe-manchin-biden-filibuster-voting-rights-1334582/

No paywall
https://archive.ph/o9UYX

“Giddy” is not a word people use to describe Jon Tester. The towering senior U.S. senator from Montana is blunt and pragmatic. In the halls of Congress, he’s one of the last surviving rural Democrats. When he’s not in Washington, D.C., Tester runs a dirt farm in Montana that’s been in his family for three generations.

A dirt-farming rural Democrat knows better than to overhype. So it came as a surprise when, one day this winter, Tester showed up visibly excited at the office of his friend Michael Bennet, one of Colorado’s two Democratic senators, to share a tantalizing piece of information.

“I think we’re gonna get this voting-rights thing done,” he said to Bennet.

“You got to be kidding me,” Bennet said.

Tester said that Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, a critical swing vote on sweeping voting-rights reforms, had signaled his support for the bill and, more crucially, the parliamentary-rules change needed to bypass a Republican filibuster of that bill. “I think it’s gonna happen,” Tester said.

For the previous six months, Tester and two of his colleagues, Tim Kaine of Virginia and Angus King of Maine, had lobbied Manchin on voting rights and the fate of the filibuster. On weekends and holidays, on conference calls and huddled in one another’s hideaways in the bowels of the Capitol, Kaine, King, and Tester had urged Manchin to support his party’s proposal for overhauling the country’s voting laws.

*snip*

[Budi]

1. Still waiting for RS to tell readers who "Knifed the Democrats -- and Bailed on Saving Democracy"...

In the crucial election of 2016.

The backstabbery came from all directions, well organized & well funded.

Tell us, Rolling Stone.
Plenty of blame to report on.
The truth of that story would be a best seller.

[betsuni]

5. [phone]

[Fiendish Thingy]

2. Manchin is a fine, upstanding statesman who embodies Democratic values & principles

That’s all his fan club will allow me to say…

[dalton99a]

3. A brave, selfless man who is not focused on enriching himself and family

and who is clearly concerned about the future of the country and its democracy

[Carlitos Brigante]

4. "He's s the kindest, bravest, warmest, most wonderful human being I've ever known in my life." nt

[betsuni]

7. Where was that?

What people are saying is that without him Republicans would have the majority and nothing at all would get done. It's 50-50 now.

[ZonkerHarris]

6. Did you expect otherwise?