Approachable Joe Manchin: One man, two parties

That Sen. Joe Manchin has been in the Senate since 2010 as a Democrat and now threatens to switch parties is more than just disloyalty. It is an insult to those, despite significant policy differences, who worked to make sure he was heard. Yet, he now says that he “is approachable” by Republicans and might leave his party if he didn’t get his way on President Joe Biden’s social spending proposals.

Manchin was reelected to the Senate in 2010 and reelected in 2016 as a Democrat. He has, in effect, a binding contract with 290,000 voters. Now, he is prepared to ignore them, switch parties, resurrect Mitch McConnell as Majority Leader, and make Republicans able to thwart more easily every administration proposed program.

What Manchin seemed to want, threatening to switch, was capitulation and not compromise. There is a difference. Negotiating in good faith is what the Senate is all about. Another senator at another time explained “Compromise is not a dirty word. The Constitution itself represents the first great national compromise. In a democratic, pluralistic society, legislation ought to be a compromise of differing points of view, of different interests.”

The senator who uttered those words was an ardent liberal, a passionate advocate for progressive programs who often depended on Republican senators to get things passed. He found a way always to stand up for what he believed, but he listened to those in both parties who disagreed.

Hubert Humphrey never insisted that his way was the only way. He held strong views and wasn’t shy about expressing them in debate and in drafts of legislation. He was the most visible liberal from his election in 1948 to his death in 1978 on civil rights, arms control, education, and health care. He muted his words, avoided needless confrontation, compromised with integrity, and never deserted his principles, nor threatened to jump parties.

Manchin, among other things, objects to the family leave section, which says “An eligible employee may take job-protected leave to care for a child of any age, spouse, domestic partner, parent, grandparent, grandchild or sibling with a serious health condition.” We are among a handful of nations without it. Suriname and Papua New Guinea, for example, don’t either.

The original proposal was for 12 weeks, but had been cut, in compromise, to four weeks. Manchin seemed to accept that until he didn’t. He now wants it out.

Newspaper reports said, “But the party’s liberal bloc ultimately had no choice but to scale back some of its ambitions.” Another report summed it up. “Joe Manchin is the deciding vote on President Biden’s Build Back Better agenda and is refusing to support it.” They have given in to him. They have gone more than halfway. Nothing is enough on his sliding scale.

Clearly, Joe Manchin is deaf to the voices of his Democratic colleagues. Maybe he can hear Sen. Humphrey, who said, “the moral test of government s how that government treats those who are the dawn of life, the children; those who are in the twilight of life, the elderly; and those who are in the shadows of life — the sick the needy, and the handicapped.” That is the family leave act. That is the Biden agenda.

Norman Sherman of Coralville has worked extensively in politics, including as Vice President Hubert Humphrey’s press secretary.