Joe Manchin is obviously a lost cause. Does anyone else see any path to anything other than passing the Collins/Murkowski bill after creating a filibuster carve-out for it? Because honestly, I’m all out of patience for Democrats stringing us along and then just ending up doing what they could have done a year ago after they fail. I don’t want any women or girls in America to suffer any longer than they already have. I highly doubt Collins and Murkowski are going to budge and frankly it’s going to be a difficult sell for Democrats to keep opposing a bill that C & M will loudly trumpet as being the same as Roe, even if it isn’t quite the same (TBD, frankly I couldn’t find a good liberal analysis of their legislation online). Less partisan Americans than myself aren’t going to appreciate that obstinance by Dems and will likely see it as political maneuvering at the expense of women. And so any political benefit in the Midterms we might get from Roe being overturned could be at risk as the debate plays out.
The good news/bad news situation is that all of the Democrats who voted for Thomas, Alito, Gorsuch, Kavanaugh, or Barrett or gone, inevitably/eventually replaced by Republicans in places where apparently not enough people believe women aren’t property… except one:
Joe Manchin.
He voted to confirm both Gorsuch and Alito.
In February, he was also the lone Democratic vote to block the Women’s Health Protection Act which would codifyi Roe into law.
Manchin is a lost cause and we all know that at this point, the less said of him the better, lest he get the press and oxygen he craves.
Given this current reality, seemingly the only apparent path to protecting some approximation of Roe would be to rely on Collins and Murkowski and pass their bill instead of the WHPA. They claim that their bill simulates Roe without any of the added protections of the WHPA. I doubt that’s entirely true, but nevertheless, to me it seems more likely that their bill would form the basis of whatever gets passed rather than stripping down the WHPA… given their nihilism and political cravenness. Of course, we would need to rely on Collins and Murkowski to do a filibuster carve-out to get there.
What am I missing?
