Bill Palmer’s kind of like the closest thing the left has to an Alex Jones. “Closest” meaning he’s still light years less insane, paranoid, and fantasy-prone. I stopped reading Palmer’s site regularly probably in early 2019, when I realized that when every other article’s header image shows Trump behind bars when that was never close to happening in real life at the time, the site wasn’t worth reading anymore. The guy’s simply way too “optimistic” that justice will be served.
That said, I hope his Sunday analysis on Twitter of where Senator Joe Manchin is at is correct. “Manchin and Murkowski both need voting rights legislation to pass in order to get reelected in their red states (Murkowski will be primaried from the right). It’s why voting rights legislation will ultimately pass. But neither wants to be seen as rigging their own reelection” Palmer writes in a long thread, saying essentially Manchin is too much of a mediocrity to pull this “balancing act” off successfully ahead of the next time he has to face voters in 2024 without also pissing off everyone who isn’t a MAGA West Virginian. It’s a rosy take, but it’s based on the almost certainly incorrect assumption that Manchin is going to get reelected. Barring drastic, sudden changes to the demographics of the West Virginia electorate, he isn’t getting reelected.
Joe Manchin won reelection in 2018, a deeply fraught midterm – especially for Red State Dem Senators – coming off the heels of the Brett Kavanaugh confirmation hearings, after which Manchin was the only Dem Senator to cast an ultimately meaningless save-your-own ass vote yes (Kav was already at 50 yes) to confirm the rapey bro to the Supreme Court. Along with Montana Senator Jon Tester and Ohio’s Sherrod Brown, Manchin survived a bloodbath that took down four other Red State Dems (a net gain of two for the GOP after the Dems flipped seats in Arizona and Nevada).
Whatever goodwill Manchin had with West Virginia Republican voters that year isn’t going to be there again in 2024. There’s a not-small chance Trump is going to be on the ballot again that year, and even if he isn’t, his hardcore MAGA opponent is going to remind voters every fucking day of that campaign that Joe voted twice to convict Trump in both impeachment trials. Nate Cohn of the New York Times is more circumspect, but says the same thing: “It is far too soon to evaluate Mr. Manchin’s chances in 2024, but early indications are not promising. Mr. Manchin voted to convict Mr. Trump at his impeachment trial in February, and he has been front and center in major legislative debates over enacting President Biden’s agenda. According to the Cooperative Election Study, a prominent academic survey, Mr. Manchin had just a 33 percent approval rating in October 2020, while 51 percent disapprove of his performance.”
If Joe Manchin is actively being bribed by Moscow Mitch or some other Republican scumbag, then it’s time for him to face the music. Fall on the fucking grenade and have a legacy to stand by. Eliminating the filibuster might have unintended consequences down the road, but everything is a risk these days. The greater risk is not acting at all when fascism is on the march.