Manchin’s Revenge

Personal Lord and Savior Manchin is a tricky personality, to say the least. He has an ego far larger than the state of West Virginia. He’s not that bright either. The combination of these two things make him very difficult to handle. In a sense, he’s like the ridiculousness of Kentucky in 1861, where it declared itself neutral in the Civil War. This was a nonsensical and mindboggling stance. But Lincoln, being smarter than Davis, decided to hold back on harassing this idiocy. When Confederate forces invaded Kentucky for entirely reasonable military goals, it moved Kentucky strongly into the Union camp and really backfired on the traitors.

That’s what I thought of when reading about why Manchin suddenly changed his mind about the climate bill. This bit is deep into this story on McConnell’s struggles to control the Senate like he thought he could. It turns out he did the one thing you can’t do with Manchin–take him for granted and not properly stoke his ego or allow him to get the things he most wants.

But Mr. McConnell has also had less success of late with his attempts to block aspects of Democrats’ agenda that he opposes. He tried and failed to scuttle their sweeping climate, health and tax package by threatening to withhold Republican support for the technology and manufacturing bill if Democrats insisted on pushing it through.

The threat angered Senator Joe Manchin III, the centrist West Virginia Democrat who had been holding out on the climate package, according to a person familiar with his thinking, and stiffened Mr. Manchin’s determination to salvage it. Democrats were ultimately able to win passage of the technology measure with support from a bloc of Republicans including Mr. McConnell, and just hours later, announced a surprise deal with Mr. Manchin that would allow them to enact their legislation to cut carbon emissions, reduce the deficit and cap prescription drug costs.

I don’t say the “personal lord and savior” bit about Manchin completely ironically. That’s because he actually believes this about himself. And personal lord and saviors need fealty. Mitch forgot that.