Prima Donna Diva Joe Manchin Wants To Sabotage The ‘Two Track’ Infrastructure Strategy

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The prima donna diva is demanding attention, again. Enough already! Why in God’s name are Senate Democrats tolerating this appeasement of GQP fascism, and sabotage of the Democratic agenda? No more accommodations for this damn fool.

Bloomberg reports, Manchin Jolts Democrats by Urging ‘Pause’ on $3.5 Trillion Bill:

Senator Joe Manchin is demanding a “strategic pause” in action on President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, potentially imperiling the $3.5 trillion tax and spending package that Democratic leaders plan to push through Congress this fall.

I’m sorry? This hillbilly coal baron from West Virginia, bought and paid for by the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, does not get to make any demands. No one elected him “decider-in-chief” for the United States, nor the U.S. Senate for that matter. He cannot even win reelection in 2024 (good riddance). He’s a dead man walking, politically speaking. His only future is working as a lobbyist for the Carbon Monopoly destroying the planet and killing the human race.

This hillbilly coal baron from West Virginia is in no position to be making any demands. He does not have nearly the leverage that he imagines he has.

Sorry, Manchin, you don’t get your “precious,” the bipartisan hard infrastructure bill, if the Democratic Caucus does not get its human infrastructure bill. Capiche? If you blow up this “two track” strategy, it is on your head, you own it. History will record that this appeaser of GQP fascism destroyed American democracy. His name will be spoken with spitting disdain.

The West Virginia Democrat, a linchpin vote in the evenly divided Senate, said at an event in his home state on Wednesday and in a Rupert Murdoch Wall Street Journal op-ed on Thursday that rising inflation and a soaring national debt necessitate a go-slow approach and a “significantly” smaller plan than the one Democratic leaders and the White House have endorsed.

“By placing a strategic pause on this budgetary proposal, by significantly reducing the size of any possible reconciliation bill to only what America can afford and needs to spend, we can and will build a better and stronger nation for all our families,” Manchin said in the op-ed.

[In] comments Wednesday at an event hosted by the West Virginia Chamber of Commerce [natch], the moderate saboteur Democrat said his party should “hit the pause button.” Lawmakers, he said, have too many other pressing issues before them, including heightening national security concerns after the Taliban takeover of Afghanistan.

Seriously Dude? Now You’re doing Fox News talking points? They don’t want you as an on-air host when you are done with destroying American democracy. You are much more valuable to them as the “useful idiot” you play appeasing GQP fascism in the Senate.

“Let’s sit back. Let’s see what happens. We have so much on our plate,”  he said.

This is what happens, you ignorant hillbilly.

Manchin’s comments come as Democratic leaders and committee chairs in the Senate and House work out the specifics of the economic package, with a goal of moving it through Congress soon after lawmakers return from a recess later this month. All members of the Senate Democratic caucus would have to back the measure for it to get the 51 votes needed to pass, with Vice President Kamala Harris providing the tie-breaking vote.

A spokesman for Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment about Manchin’s request, and White House Press Secretary Jen Psaki did not immediately provide a comment.

The chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Representative Pramila Jayapal, replied “Absolutely not” on Twitter to Manchin’s idea of a pause.

The spending package also is facing obstacles in the House. Democrats can only afford three defections in that chamber if Republicans are united in opposition, and some moderate saboteur Democrats also are balking at the size of the package being drawn up.

This is only happening because Fifth Column senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are giving them cover in the Senate. Without this pair of prima donna divas in the Senate, these House saboteurs would fold like a cheap suit under the icy stare from House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

Manchin also called on the House to pass within a few weeks a Senate-passed $550 billion bipartisan infrastructure bill.

Not happening.

Bernie Sanders, a Vermont independent and the chairman of the Senate Budget Committee tweeted on Thursday night: “Rebuilding our crumbling physical infrastructure – roads, bridges, water systems – is important. Rebuilding our crumbling human infrastructure – health care, education, climate change – is more important. No infrastructure bill without the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill.”

What I said: You don’t get your “precious,” the bipartisan hard infrastructure bill, if the Democratic Caucus does not get its human infrastructure bill. Capiche? If both fail, it is on your head, you own it.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has promised progressives in the chamber that she will marry that legislation with the much bigger Democrat-only tax-and-spending package, although moderates have been promised an infrastructure vote by late September.

[H]ouse panels are beginning work on select portions of the $3.5 trillion package, but timing isn’t clear in the Senate. Despite a Sept. 15 deadline for Senate committees to complete work on the bill, no panels in that chamber have yet announced legislative meetings.

The goddamn Senate is broken and needs to be reimagined in a Constitutional Amendment. This dysfunctional anti-democratic institution designed to preserve the privilege and power of the wealthy white elites is no longer serving the interests of this country.

Manchin last month voted with other Senate Democrats to help pass a fiscal blueprint that could help enable the broader economic bill to pass the Senate without any GOP support, by short-circuiting the filibuster. However, even then, he didn’t commit to backing a bill as big as $3.5 trillion, citing rising inflation and a soaring federal debt.

Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell this week said Manchin and another Democratic moderate, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, are seen by the GOP as their best prospects [saboteurs] for defeating the big-ticket economic package.

“These are two Democratic senators that seem to have some real resistance to all this,” McConnell said at an event in his home state of Kentucky. “I pray for their good health and wise judgment every night. I recommend you do the same.”

An endorsement from the “Grim Reaper of Democracy” should spell the death of your political career.

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12 thoughts on “Prima Donna Diva Joe Manchin Wants To Sabotage The ‘Two Track’ Infrastructure Strategy”

  2. “.. Politico is known as “Tiger Beat on the Potomac”…”

    Wileybud, yeah but…

    Trump is either trying to keep his grift going indefinitely or he’s encouraged by Biden’s difficulties at this moment as well as the new voter restrictions being legislated. Trump might seriously consider another run if the GOP does well in 2022. And the only way for Trump to heal his poor, hurt ego is run again and win. He might be able to sell the “Big Lie” to his gullible, ignorant followers but he knows it’s a lie.

    Either way, two things are true:
    1. Trump can’t be trusted to NOT try to run again.
    2. Democratic infighting contributes to this possibility.

  3. Liza, Politico is known as “Tiger Beat on the Potomac” (h/t Charles Pierce) for a reason. Sometimes they do good work, most of the time they put out teenage level right wing fluffing.

  4. “Democratic infighting can have only one winner: The Trumpist GOP”

    https://www.politico.com/news/2021/09/07/trump-campaign-operation-2024-510013

    Trump builds ‘turnkey’ campaign operation for 2024

    The former president is signaling a heightened interest in a rematch with Joe Biden — and laying the necessary groundwork.
    By MERIDITH MCGRAW and MARC CAPUTO
    09/07/2021 04:30 AM EDT

    Boots on the ground in Iowa. Accelerated fundraising. More national media interviews. A flood of new press statements. A rise in attack ads on the web.

    With a flurry of activity from his main political committee and hints dropped in private conversations with confidantes and advisers, Donald Trump is signaling a heightened interest in reclaiming the White House — and laying the necessary groundwork to do it.

    But associates say President Joe Biden’s declining political fortunes amid the resurgence of coronavirus and the Aug.15 fall of Kabul have intensified the interest of the former president, who is already motivated by a burning sense of pride and grievance over his loss to Biden.

    Nearly every poll shows that Trump, at this point, has little to fear from others in a Republican primary. The top potential GOP candidates in 2024 have said they wouldn’t run against him — or have shied away from saying they would — and refrained from criticizing him.

  6. To revive an old internet trope….What Digby said:

    The truth is that the bill is much less than 3.5 trillion. There are a ton of off-sets and pay-fors (mostly with taxe hikes on the wealthy.) I continue to believe that the best way to handle him and Sinema is to insist on the bill being 3.5 trillion, no matter what even though it isn’t. Then they should go behind closed doors for a few days and come out with the real number giving Manchin and Sinema credit for “cutting” it.

    These two are Divas. They need attention and desperately want to be seen as powerful mavericks who know how to wield their power. But they aren’t wonks and neither of them really care about any of this. Treat them like the spoiled, petty royals they are and give them their moment in the sun. It’s pathetic but it’s the only way to deal with these people.

    https://digbysblog.net/2021/09/07/infrastructure-kabuki-2/

  7. Jon Skolnik reports, “Manchin releases op-ed opposing Biden’s infrastructure plan following corporate lobbying blitz”, https://www.salon.com/2021/09/02/manchin-releases-op-ed-opposing-bidens-infrastructure-plan-following-corporate-lobbying-blitz/

    Manchin’s aggressive stance against the bill comes just as Corporate America mounts a new and strident effort to put the measure down. According to The Washington Post, companies like Pfizer, ExxonMobil, and Disney are currently organizing a “lobbying blitz” through various interest groups and trade associations such as National Association of Manufacturers, the Business Roundtable, PhRMA, and the U.S. Chamber of Commerce.

    The campaign, the Post noted, is expected to entail traditional lobbying channels as well as a flood of attack ads against Democrats. “We’re doing it in every way you can imagine,” Aric Newhouse, the senior vice president for policy at the National Association of Manufacturers, told the Post.

    They won’t have to work too hard. “U.S. Chamber rewards Senators Manchin, Sinema for opposing Biden initiatives”, https://www.reuters.com/world/us/us-chamber-backs-manchin-sinema-with-campaign-contributions-2021-04-15/

    The U.S. Chamber of Commerce said it is backing Democratic Senators Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema with campaign contributions as a reward for their opposition to some of President Joe Biden’s legislative initiatives and for trying to work with Republicans.

    And “LEAKED AUDIO OF SEN. JOE MANCHIN CALL WITH BILLIONAIRE DONORS PROVIDES RARE GLIMPSE OF DEALMAKING ON FILIBUSTER”, https://theintercept.com/2021/06/16/joe-manchin-leaked-billionaire-donors-no-labels/

    The meeting was hosted by the group No Labels, a big money operation co-founded by former Sen. Joe Lieberman that funnels high-net-worth donor money to conservative Democrats and moderate Republicans.

    The call included several billionaire investors and corporate executives, among them Louis Bacon, chief executive of Moore Capital Management; Kenneth D. Tuchman, founder of global outsourcing company TeleTech; and Howard Marks, the head of Oaktree Capital, one of the largest private equity firms in the country. The Zoom participant log included a dial-in from Tudor Investment Corporation, the hedge fund founded by billionaire Paul Tudor Jones. Also present was a roster of heavy-hitting political influencers, including Republican consultant Ron Christie and Lieberman, who serves as a representative of No Labels and now advises corporate interests.

    And this: “Rupert Murdoch-funded Fox Corp. PAC contributes to Democrat Joe Manchin’s campaign”, https://www.cnbc.com/2021/07/15/fox-news-owner-donates-to-joe-manchins-campaign.html?__source=sharebar%7Ctwitter&par=sharebar

    The Fox Corp. PAC, which is funded in part by conservative media mogul Rupert Murdoch, gave $1,500 to Manchin’s 2024 reelection campaign in June, according to a disclosure to the Federal Election Commission. The campaign raised just over $1.4 million in the second quarter.

    It would mark the first time Manchin has received a donation from the Fox Corp. PAC, according to a CNBC review of FEC records and data from the nonpartisan Center for Responsive Politics.

    —

    Bought and paid for by the Plutocracy and corporate lobbyists.

  8. Jim Newell at Slate has a theory about “What Is Joe Manchin Doing Now?”, https://slate.com/news-and-politics/2021/09/manchin-debt-oped-what-it-means.html

    Nowhere in his many complaints about the national debt, and how adding an excess $3.5 trillion in debt now could accelerate inflation, is an acknowledgement of the relevant fact that Democrats are not writing a bill that adds $3.5 trillion to the debt. The budget blueprint that Democrats have already passed would only allow them to add about half of that to the debt, if they were so inclined—the rest would be offset with tax increases and other savings found by the Senate Finance Committee. But Democrats, specifically to satisfy Joe Manchin, have also said many times that they would pay for the entire bill anyway. Some of the accounting will be gimmickry, sure, but Manchin didn’t complain about the accounting gimmickry in the bipartisan infrastructure bill, which he adored.

    Maybe these are famous last words, but I don’t see Manchin ultimately tanking a reconciliation bill over concerns of this nature. Something is likely to pass, even if the final product is a skeleton of Bernie Sanders’ transformative vision. Instead, his op-ed is the latest step in a coordinated effort from centrist Democrats in both the House and Senate, and their outside peers, to secure leverage over the endgame.

    Manchin and those aligned with him needed to do something to regain some influence. The original legislative strategy that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi put together was that the House would not pass the Senate-approved bipartisan infrastructure bill—which centrists desperately want to see signed int o law—until the Senate had also sent over an adequate reconciliation bill. By holding the bipartisan deal hostage, progressives, in theory, could compel centrists’ participation in the reconciliation bill.

    Centrists, then, came up with a plan to free the hostage. In August, nine House moderates, led by New Jersey Rep. Josh Gottheimer, threatened not to pass the budget blueprint that would set up the reconciliation process until they got a vote on the bipartisan deal. After some delayed votes and torrid late-night negotiating sessions, the Gott Gang and House Democratic leaders struck a deal: The House would vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill no later than Sept. 27. The House moderates were egged on in these negotiations by Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, as well as by the well-financed [corporate] group No Labels.

    Pelosi said afterwards that she had always intended to hold a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill by the end of September, as that’s when the existing highway bill expired. What the moderates secured, then, was a public acknowledgement from Pelosi that her open-ended commitment to hold the Senate bill hostage was untenable.

    And so it does not surprise me that, shortly after House moderates put an expiration date (Sept. 27) on whatever leverage progressives had, Joe Manchin would write an op-ed calling for a “strategic pause” to slow the reconciliation process down. There is indeed a considerable amount of strategy in the pause Manchin proposes, but it has little to do with the misleading debt and inflation arguments he makes in his piece. Manchin, and fellow moderates, want to see the bipartisan infrastructure deal passed out of the House so that they have the ability to walk away from the reconciliation bill if they want to [Betrayal and bad faith.] That ability would give them the absolute upper hand in negotiations over it.

    [A]gain, odds are this all gets worked out some way, as both pieces of the Biden agenda have attained a certain too-big-to-fail status. If it all goes south, though, there will have been a bigger problem at play from which all the threats and hostage-taking were merely symptoms: Democrats on opposing wings of the party do not trust each other to hold up their ends of the bargain. If they did, there would not be so much angst and strategic plotting about something as basic as the sequencing of votes.

  9. “If McConnell becomes Majority Leader again the first thing he’ll do is get rid of the filibuster…”

    Most definitely. He knows neither the Democrats or the Republicans are likely to have 60 senators anytime soon, perhaps never again. And he certainly doesn’t believe in bipartisanship, in fact he’s against it.

    Manchin and Sinema are a couple of wretched, deplorable fools. There’s nothing to compare them to.

  10. Both Manchin & Sinema have willingly earned the title of “Mitch’s Bitches” (Now with extra whining!). If McConnell becomes Majority Leader again the first thing he’ll do is get rid of the filibuster…in a heartbeat! And his two bitches will moan & wail that no one could have seen that coming.

  11. “Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell this week said Manchin and another Democratic moderate, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, are seen by the GOP as their best….”

    McConnell, speaking about stealing a SCOTUS appointment from a sitting Democratic president said: “One of my proudest moments was when I looked Barack Obama in the eye and I said, ‘Mr. President, you will not fill the Supreme Court vacancy.’ ”

    I’m wondering if derailing Biden’s agenda by playing the DINO duo like a fiddle would be as satisfying. Probably a close second at the very least.

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