West Virginia Democratic senator Joe Manchin has lately been receiving his share of criticism...some of it excessively personal...from others in his party, including the President. Although not addressing Manchin by name, Biden referred to him and colleague Kyrsten Sinema from Arizona as two senators who seem to vote more with Republicans than Democrats...a patently false statement: Manchin votes overwhelmingly with his party. But in some matters he represents a lone voice, opposing any move to eliminate the legislative filibuster as well as his party's current For the People bill about voting and election reform. As it is, I think that with just about any piece of legislation there is room of compromise, but in this climate of political gridlock with each party catering to their extreme wing, that word "compromise" is almost always depicted as betrayal instead of the logical result of elected officials recognizing the importance of getting things accomplished in a constructive manner for the American people and passing legislation that won't automatically be rescinded the next time the "other" party gains power...and it always eventually does. Now Manchin is being depicted as some kind of racist for his principled stands...nothing that I know of the man, though, indicates anything of the sort. What many in his own party don't seem to "get" is that in an overwhelmingly red state he represents like West Virginia, Joe Manchin...its former governor...is nowadays probably the only Democrat they would elect to statewide office. Instead of running him down, Democrats should be counting their blessings and realizing that his presence in the Senate is the reason they can get Biden's nominees brought to the floor and approved and their bills can be sent through committees and also brought up for votes...
My overriding concern about voting and elections is the number of laws recently passed by Republican-run state legislatures that transfer the authority of certifying election results to those highly partisan legislatures, meaning that in any close election occurring under their jurisdiction they can let Republican victories pass unhindered while overturning Democratic wins under any pretext of false fraud charges. The For the People Act doesn't seem to address this threat to our democracy, but rather tends to focus on making the act of voting much more a passive endeavor than one requiring the participant to make any sort of effort. It also imposes a code of ethics on the Supreme Court and pushes for D.C. statehood, issues that are worthwhile to discuss but not directly germane to the bill's topic. I personally oppose ballot harvesting, a process that this bill would impose nationally and which grants political operatives the opportunity to canvass neighborhoods for voters in their own party, pick up their ballots and deliver them to the elections office...all sorts of trouble can result from this. And I'm also not a fan of universal vote-by-mail where the population regularly gets doused with mail-in ballots, as with the recent U.S. Census many of them to incorrect addresses. To its credit, though, the bill does place restrictions on state officials purging voter rolls just before elections and gives such voters recourse to contest their removal. Senator Manchin has clearly stated that he objects to the For the People Act in its present form...in all likelihood he's seeing some of the same things I am. There is no way I see him supporting eliminating the legislative filibuster, so the Democratic leadership has a choice: either work with the Republican opposition to come up with bills that can pass (and remain in law when power inevitably changes hands at some future time) or wait until the 2022 election and hope that they retain control of the House and expand their Senate majority to the point that Manchin and Sinema cannot thwart the move to end that 60-vote legislative threshold. Will Joe Manchin disappoint me in the future by something he says or does? Almost certainly as he's already done so in the past, but unlike the millions of Trump idolaters and those who adoringly "feel the Bern" for Senator Sanders, I question elected officials and don't worship them...
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