Congress remains in recess, but with Ukraine hotting up, COVID digging in, and a government shutdown around the corner (as always), actual congressional behind the scenes work has not stopped. The White House’s approach, however, is changing and getting more pointed. That includes a salty hot mic moment from President Joe Biden, who has apparently decided to let his inner Biden out when asked a stupid question.
It also extends to the thorn in everyone’s side, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin, who has led Biden and the rest of the Democrats on a merry chase as they try to pin him down on just what he might support in Build Back Better—the big social investment and climate change bill—or even voting rights and the filibuster. Remember, the bill that Manchin voted against last week in his refusal to help break the filibuster was the Freedom to Vote Act. That’s the bill a bunch of Democrats and Manchin wrote after he rejected the House-passed For the People Act. Manchin is such a turncoat he voted against his own bill.
After months of being strung along in public by Manchin, there’s a new approach from the White House, articulated by Press Secretary Jen Psaki Monday: “We’re just not going to speak to or confirm any conversations the President has with members of the Senate, moving forward.”
That’s prudent. What Manchin was telling the White House in private clearly didn’t match what Manchin has intended to do or say in public. Assuming he was acting in good faith was clearly a mistake.
Speaking of not acting in good faith, the Minority Leader Mitch McConnell/Sen. Susan Collins ploy to derail a renewed push for voting rights with a distraction is playing out. Collins has organized a bipartisan gang to ostensibly work on Electoral Count Act (ECA) reform. The first Zoom meeting was Monday. The group’s focus is on Congress and the vice president’s role in certifying elections, and tightening the process up so the kind of coup Trump attempted would be impossible.
In addition to Manchin and Arizonan Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, the Democrats in that first meeting were Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire, Mark Warner of Virginia, Chris Coons of Delaware, Chris Murphy of Connecticut, and Ben Cardin of Maryland. This group, minus Murphy and Cardin, was made up of the same Democrats who helped derail Biden’s Build Back Better plan by splintering off on the bipartisan hard infrastructure bill, intentionally or not.
Murphy and Cardin might be there to avoid another similar occurrence, like Democrats giving the whole voting rights and elections reforms game away for a milquetoast agreement on counting the votes after the fact. ECA reform is critical, but it can’t replace ensuring the right to vote to every eligible citizen and free and unfettered access to the polls.
If there’s been progress on Build Back Better, or on avoiding a government shutdown after Feb. 18, it’s not been reported publicly. Presumably, those talks are ongoing. Just not in the public eye.