While it’s not as good as it should be, what Manchin claims to support would reduce the voter suppression which republicans are pushing. However, he continues to require ten republicans join him before he will allow it to pass. He last claimed that the amount of republican support demonstrates whether or not measures meant to undo voter suppression were valid.
Here is the gist of his defense for his position.
seeking partisan advantage. Whether it is state laws that seek to needlessly restrict voting or politicians who ignore the need to secure our elections, partisan policymaking won’t instill confidence in our democracy — it will destroy it.
garnered zero Republican support. Why? Are the very Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump because of actions that led to an attack on our democracy unwilling to support actions to strengthen our democracy
(the filibuster was) critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past. And I cannot explain strictly partisan election reform or blowing up the Senate rules to expedite one party’s agenda.
However, only one republican senator supports even the insufficient and relatively meager John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act, Senator Murkowski and she admits that even that act is extremely unlikely to pass via regular order.
"I think it's going to be a challenge," said GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski of Alaska. "You have Democrats who made clear that they're going to line up pretty much, without the exception of Sen. Joe Manchin."
"To get to 60, it's pretty difficult to count," the Alaska senator added.
Murkowski's blunt assessment underscores how any legislation to overhaul voting laws is highly unlikely to pass the 50-50 Senate over the next two years given stiff resistance voiced by Manchin and a handful of other Democrats over
changing the filibuster rules so legislation can advance along straight party lines.
So the question you posed, Senator Manchin, returns to you: if the John Lewis Voting Rights Advancement Act is reasonable and valid, then why is it that only one republican senator supports it (since that is your test) ? If it isn’t reasonable and valid, why do you support it ? The actual answer is that finding it morally wrong for a president of the United States to incite an insurrection does not denote the crossing of some noteworthy moral threshold. These same republicans, like the entire party, have supported suppressing the vote for a very long time because it helps them and their party win elections. There weren’t enough republicans to even get a commission on the events of the sixth of January, the insurrection.
While the filibuster certainly should be eliminated, Senator Manchin can certainly craft an exception to the filibuster for a voting rights / democracy bill . This would mean that the only adjustment to the filibuster would be for a voting rights / democracy bill. Nothing else would be affected. Since he can do that, then what we have is :
Manchin : I support undoing voter suppression and support voting rights
But it can only be passed if there is an exception made to the filibuster for voting rights bills
However, Manchin continues: I refuse to make an exception exclusively for voting rights bills to the filibuster.
So, really we have this shorter Manchin :
Manchin :
I support A
But A can only be passed if B is done.
However, B can be done in such a way as to only enable A and nothing else.
And I absolutely refuse to do B.
The only conclusion I can draw from this is that he doesn’t actually support A because of what I wrote previously, corporate donations.