For those who haven’t seen (or don’t quite remember) Being John Malkovich, here is a thumbnail of the 1999 film’s plot: A street-performing puppeteer, adept at portraying the indwelling essence of his characters, accidentally discovers a secret pathway into the mind of the actor John Malkovich. Watch the movie if you want to know where this leads, but I will say that, even when it was new, it was a little too weird to attract blockbuster-scale attention. Being Joe Manchin is unlikely to do even that well, but the matching JM initials alone suggest that it might sustain one blog post. So, let’s try being Joe Manchin for a few paragraphs.
As the machinations over the two infrastructure bills gyrate their way through their own version of a puppet theater, West Virginia’s senior senator continues to attract more attention than all 534 of his congressional colleagues combined. If you had to predict the role that Manchin will end up playing in this drama, you might look to a previous senator from West Virginia for a model. Here is how Politico described Robert Byrd on his death in 2010:
“Byrd held virtually every major leadership post in the Senate, but he is perhaps best known for … funneling federal money to projects in his economically depressed home state. Anyone who has driven the scenic byways of West Virginia, visited the state’s national parks or stopped by the federal courthouse in Charleston, W.Va., has borne witness to his power — Byrd’s name is everywhere.”
Manchin hasn’t seemed to share Byrd’s single-minded focus on plastering his name around the state, but it’s a pretty safe bet that West Virginia will end up with more than its share from whatever infrastructure bills pass this year, and that the state’s voters will somehow be made aware of that if Manchin seeks reelection in 2024.
This sounds a little more cynical than I actually am about this dimension of being Joe Manchin. It’s simply a fact that infrastructure is pork; there wouldn’t even be a bipartisan infrastructure bill if there weren’t Republican pork in it, and there won’t be a “reconciliation” infrastructure bill if there isn’t a good larding of West Virginia pork in it. There’s nothing remarkable, then, in the fact that pork barrel politics will play a role in what it means to be Joe Manchin for the rest of this year. What might be a little more surprising is to realize that, by next year, being Joe Manchin could mean being a Republican.
I’m not predicting this, any more than I’m urging you to download Being John Malkovich tonight, but just think about it for a minute. Remember that since 1890, 21 U.S. Senators have switched parties while in office, most recently Joseph Lieberman in 2006 and Arlen Specter in 2009. West Virginia is now the perfect place for extending this history.
Throughout most of Robert Byrd’s record-breaking 51 years in the Senate, West Virginia had been a solidly Democratic state. But by Byrd’s death in 2010, the tide was turning. Bill Clinton carried the state in both of his elections, but no Democrat has done so since, and in 2020, Donald Trump buried Joe Biden by more than a 2-1 margin.
Manchin himself has so far survived this tidal wave, receiving 60% of the vote in 2012, when Mitt Romney was swamping Obama 62-35%. By 2018, though, Manchin barely eked out a win with 49.6% of the vote, saved from defeat by a spoiler Libertarian candidate who garnered 4.2%. After the 2020 Republican landslide, Manchin was the only West Virginia Democrat left holding a statewide office. The governor, Jim Justice, had been elected to that office as a Democrat in 2016, but switched parties the next year at a Trump rally, and then easily won re-election on Trump’s coattails in 2020.
So, if you found yourself being Joe Manchin midway through this Senate term, knowing that if you switched parties now, you would not only be back on the right side at home, but you would make Mitch McConnell the majority leader, eager to extend any gift in his power – what might you do?
This hypothetical glimpse of a near-future Joe Manchin won’t be a welcome one to most readers, who might be inclined to cajole or scold him out of pork-barrel or party-bolting politics. But the deeper lesson may be a reminder of a hard truth about representative democracy: that finally its health lies in our hands, that if our system fails us, it is our responsibility to repair it.
My point, then, isn’t to predict which party label Joe Manchin will be wearing next year, but to draw attention to how radically bipolar our politics have become. If we had three or four viable parties, one person switching allegiance from one party to another would seldom be of great consequence. But with everyone caucusing in one of two rooms, and with the numbers in those rooms being so nearly equal, one person crossing over can change everything.
What Joe Manchin will choose to do in the coming weeks — what particular gifts he will bring back to the Mountain State, which caucus room he will shuffle into — will certainly be matters of interest to many of us. But of far more enduring concern is whether we as a self-governing people will continue to allow the tyranny of the two-party system to dominate (and far too often to immobilize) our governing institutions or whether we will take the steps necessary to loosen that knot.
In fact, we have already begun to do that, with tentative experiments in a few pioneering places. Ranked choice voting, now the law in Maine and Alaska and several cities, including New York City, gives citizens choices beyond the either-or bipolarity that masks the complexity voters know to characterize their world. Redistricting reform, by moving control of this crucial procedure from the hands of partisan legislators to citizen commissions, is beginning to loosen the stranglehold of the two-party system in a growing number of states. These and other citizen-driven reforms are the main focus of Citizens Uniting to Restore Our Democracy and its associated website. Please join the conversation, if you’re so inclined.
Few of us would welcome the chance to be Joe Manchin just now, even if we could bring piles of cash to struggling communities or determine who controls the U.S. Senate. But any of us can contribute to the healing of a political system that has allowed itself to be overtaken by a radically polarized two-party system that is increasingly out of touch with the real world we all inhabit.
Some among the nation’s Founders warned us against “factions” (parties) noting that they would work against the success of the new nation. By Jefferson’s day, they were in full force and continue to operate at a high level. They are the uniform of power, of course, identifying values through promises on how politics will be played.
And while parties are mentioned exactly ZERO times in the Constitution, they remain the source of organized lawmaking. For example, Mitch McConnell, who is but the senior senator from a sort of middling state, exerts inordinate power by virtue of his role as Majority Leader. His power virtually matches that of the Speaker of the House, a Constitutional officer, although there is no such office as Majority Leader in the Constitution. He holds this power by virtue of the strength of his party and the clause in the Constitution that allows each House of Congress to make its own rules. As Majority Leader, McConnell can choke off legislation, slow walk it, deny the President the opportunity to fulfill the President’s obligation to appoint federal judges—or accelerate the confirmation of them if the President is of the same party—and host of other actions that are, frankly, un-democratic. (Yes, I recall that Senator Mike Mansfield was also a Senate Majority Leader, but I think he served at a time when he felt serving meant just that.).
I have heard arguments that parties are necessary for governing because of their organizing qualities and that they serve as a vetting influence and “develop the bench” of political candidates allowing for the coordination of campaign financing and helping individuals with their political careers. As Daniel has pointed out in this essay, one wonders if we haven’t made some devil’s bargain to gain what parties can do for politics for what parties do TO politics.
Great piece, Daniel. Thoughtful, patient and well-written. Your wisdom shines through. My “problem” is that I am sick and tired of Joe Manchin and his excuses. Foremost is his so called support of the filibuster, something which I think should no longer remain in our democratic process. It’s history is pure racist and hateful (Civil Rights) and continues to be that today, even worse. The GOP will use it to block anything that its supreme leader disagrees with! Its usefulness is gone. I find it unbelievable that with Biden’s win Trump’s band of enemies against our Republic still rule. Yes, we lost seats in Congress. Then came January 6th – Trump and his goons committed treason, in my view. They should be stopped at all costs ( and severely punished). However, they haven’t been. It’s time to put partisanship aside because you can’t negotiate with cowardice, racism, hatred and ignorance. Politicians are politicians, yes, however the GOP has carried it too far. Manchin is not the only Dem. supporting the filibuster but he is willingly the poster child.
From Richard Drake:
Dan:
Thank you for sending me your post about Joe Manchin. He is a fascinating figure, although not in the positive sense of that word. I agree with your point about the sorry state of our two-party system, but I have studied the multi-party Italian political system sufficiently to know that increasing the number of parties might not necessarily lead to an improvement in our politics. In the Italian case, a multiple party system has led to its own brand of political dysfunction. Keep up your good work with Citizens Uniting.
Richard