Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) — a persistent thorn in the side of the leftist wing of the Democratic Party — revealed Thursday it was the Jan. 6 riot inside the U.S. Capitol that convinced him of Americans’ need to find some semblance of unity.
The West Virginia lawmaker told CNN he was “changed” by the riot, which was largely carried out by radicalized supporters of then-President Donald Trump.
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“I never thought in my life — I never read in history books to where our form of government had been attacked, at our seat of government, which is Washington, D.C., at our Capitol, by our own people,” Manchin said. “So, something told me, ‘Wait a minute. Pause. Hit the pause button. Something’s wrong. You can’t have this many people split to where they want to go to war with each other.’”
CNN’s Wolf Blitzer, in his lead up to congressional reporter Lauren Fox’s interview with Manchin, described the centrist senator as “one of the most powerful people in Washington.”
That has certainly proven to be the case as he has stood athwart the more aggressive proposals from the leftist element of his party.
“I’m not killing the filibuster,” he told Fox. “I’ve been very, very clear.”
Manchin went on to say he is confident Congress — the Senate, in particular — can “find a pathway forward” on issues like the controversial H.R. 1, which would, in essence, establish a nationalized voting system. He told the CNN reporter he plans to sit down with Republicans and Democrats to understand “where everybody’s coming from.”
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“[Democrats] can make all these changes if they try to work towards the middle,” the senator said. “You can’t work in the fringes. You just cannot work in the fringes. We want fair, open, secure elections. … But I’ve also been a secretary of state and I’ve been a governor and I know the 10th Amendment. I know my rights as far as states’ rights, and I don’t think there should be overreaching, if you will, federal elections.”
Attacks from the left
Those comments — and Manchin’s commitment to the filibuster — are not going over well with his counterparts to the left.
Filmmaker Rob Reiner wrote Thursday he is “sick and tired of Joe Manchin controlling the Senate” by trying to work with “Republican senators who stand for nothing but obstructionism and white supremacy.”
The radical Black Lives Matter organization condemned Manchin’s Washington Post op-ed, in which he defended his support of the filibuster, which it described as “a Jim Crow era tool used by racists to protect white supremacy.”
Political pundit Matthew Dowd told leftist CNN host Don Lemon the filibuster “isn’t helping create places where you can reach common sense consensus.”
House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) suggested Manchin is “an obstacle.”
Manchin’s Senate colleague, socialist Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) told MSNBC’s Mehdi Hasan Democrats are doing “a lot of work internally” to pressure Manchin to move to the left.
“I have no problem going to West Virginia,” Sanders said, suggesting he is all for public pressure against Manchin. “I think we need a grassroots movement that makes it clear to Joe Manchin and everybody else in the United States Senate, including Republicans, that the progressive agenda is what the American people want. They want to raise that minimum wage to $15 an hour. They believe that health care is a human right, should be universal. They demand that the rich start paying their fair share of taxes. These are not my ideas. These are what the American people want right now, and our job is to rally the American people in every state in the country to make sure that the government starts working for the working class of this country, not just the 1%.”
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