"Baldwin officials said the numbers were not final but that she has taken the lead and the margin is too large for Hovde to make up."

It says here in "Tammy Baldwin declares victory in Wisconsin Senate race in 2024 election over Eric Hovde" (Milwaukee Journal Sentinel).

With 97.3% of the votes counted, Baldwin led Hovde by 49.2% to 48.7% — a margin of nearly 16,000 votes — in a race that drew attention and big bucks from around the country. Absentee ballots had not yet been counted in Racine and Oshkosh and votes had not all been counted in various places in Oshkosh.... The Democratic incumbent outperformed Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, who was losing to former President Donald Trump by more than 41,000 votes.

Control of the Senate doesn't hinge on this race: "Republicans Clinch Control of the Senate/After picking up seats in West Virginia and Ohio and winning an unexpectedly close race in Nebraska, the G.O.P. had enough for a majority. Tight races in swing states will determine their margin" (NYT).

"When elites pine for a third-party candidate, they usually imagine someone like Michael Bloomberg, a fiscal conservative and social liberal."

"But the sweet spot for a third-party candidate has always been slightly left of center on economics and moderate to conservative on cultural issues — and that describes Manchin better than it does most American politicians."

Writes Ross Douthat in "Should Joe Manchin Run for President?" (NYT).

"With West Virginia off the Senate chessboard next year, Democrats must win every race they are defending — and depend on President Biden to win the White House..."

".... in order to maintain a majority.... With no competitive race [in West Virginia] in 2024, both parties will have tens of millions of dollars to spend on a second tier of battleground races. Last year, candidates, parties and outside groups spent more than $1.3 billion on 36 Senate races, including $737 million in just five states — Arizona, Nevada, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Wisconsin — that are also on the ballot again next year. 'I think Wisconsin and Michigan are about to get a bunch of Republican money they weren’t going to get otherwise,' said Brad Todd, a Republican strategist who has worked on Senate races.... There is no top-flight Republican challenging Senator Tammy Baldwin in Wisconsin, but the party has been pushing for Eric Hovde, a businessman who ran for Senate in 2012....."

 
I'm reading "With Manchin Out, Democrats’ Path to Holding the Senate Is Narrow/While the party will be on defense in every competitive race, Republicans face some messy primaries and a recent history of nominating extreme candidates who have lost key contests" (NYT).

"Manchin, 76, had previously flirted with the idea of running on a third-party presidential ticket, an idea pushed by the group No Labels."

"When reached after the announcement, Manchin spokeswoman Sam Runyon declined to comment on whether Manchin planned to pursue a presidential run."

I'm reading "Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin says he will not seek reelection" (WaPo).

Somehow, on the same day, "Jill Stein launches 2024 bid as Green Party candidate" (The Hill).

Weeds of July.

Joe Pye weed:

Butterfly weed:

Feel free to write about anything you want in the comments. Raise your own topics. Myself, I've read a lot of news stories this morning and my rejection rate is unusually high.

Some headlines feel so stupid — "Finally, the dam is breaking against Trump" — that it puts me off all the surrounding headlines. It's like a disease.

Did you know monkeypox is an emergency? Did you know there's a movie called "Nope"? Did you know "Liz Holtzman Wants Another Crack at Congress, 50 Years Later"? Did you know "Joe Manchin Squanders an Opportunity and Ushers In Despair"? Are you interested in News of the Future: "Jan. 6 Panel After 8 Hearings: Where Will the Evidence Lead?"

"We have to codify Roe v. Wade in the law, and the way to do that is to make sure the Congress votes to do that. And if the filibuster gets in the way, it’s like voting rights, we provide an exception for this, or an exception to the filibuster for this action."

Said President Biden, quoted in "Biden, Chiding Court, Endorses Ending Filibuster to Codify Abortion Rights/The president called the Supreme Court’s decision overturning Roe v. Wade 'destabilizing' and said Congress needed to act to codify it into law" (NYT).

It was only the second time Mr. Biden has urged Congress to scrap its rules on the filibuster. In January, he called on lawmakers to make an exception to pass legislation to add voting rights protections. Speaking at a news conference in Madrid... Mr. Biden lamented the impact of the court’s decision on a woman’s right to have an abortion, calling Roe a “critical, critical piece.”

A critical, critical piece of what? I'm sure he left it hanging. The NYT would not edit him into less articulateness. Here's the full statement at the White House website: "Remarks by President Biden in Press Conference/Madrid, Spain."

Ah! An entire press conference. Interestingly, Biden had already used the phrase "critical, critical." Earlier in the press conference, a NYT reporter asked him "How long is it fair to expect American drivers and drivers around the world to pay that premium for this war?" He said:

"Unless Sinema wigs out..."

Unless Sinema wigs out, that's it. Judge Ketanji Brown Jackson will be joining the Supreme Court. The only question is whether Collins, Murkowski, Romney and maybe a couple of others will do the right thing. https://t.co/y1ig82BLvZ

— Dan Kennedy (@dankennedy_nu) March 25, 2022

"Some senators get so whacky in the national spotlight that they can’t function without it."

"Trump had that effect on Republicans. Before Trump, Lindsey Graham was almost a normal human being. Then Trump directed a huge amp of national attention Graham’s way, transmogrifying the senator into a bizarro creature who’d say anything Trump wanted to keep the attention coming. Not all senators are egomaniacs, of course. Most lie on an ego spectrum ranging from mildly inflated to pathological. Manchin and Sinema are near the extreme. Once they got a taste of the national spotlight, they couldn’t let go. They must have figured that the only way they could keep the spotlight focused on themselves was by threatening to do what they finally did last week: shafting American democracy."

Writes Robert Reich in "Where egos dare: Manchin and Sinema show how Senate spotlight corrupts" (The Guardian). 

Is it "whacky" or "wacky"? The author of "Common Errors in English Usage" says:

"Manchin is especially vulnerable to accusations of imperial remove. Photos that circulated online show him chatting over the rail of his houseboat in Washington with angry constituents, who had arrived by kayak."

Writes Evan Osnos in "West Virginians Ask Joe Manchin: Which Side Are You On? The senator’s blockade against programs that have helped his constituents escape poverty makes some question 'who matters to Joe'" (The New Yorker).

Is it "imperial" to live in a houseboat — a houseboat accessible by angry kayakers?

Eh. Everyone has to write a lot of sentences about Joe Manchin right now. It's tedious but you can find some gems in there.

The Manchins are machers; Joe’s grandfather ran Farmington’s grocery store and served, over the years, as its fire chief, constable, justice of the peace, and mayor. His father had a similar stature in local politics, while also expanding the family business from groceries into furniture and carpets....

Machers... I had to look it up. It's a Yiddish word, I learned, reading "What Makes a Macher" (Forward):

"I'm from West Virginia. I'm not where they're from and they can just beat the living crap out of people and think they’ll be submissive."

 

ADDED: Whatever they say publicly I will test against the hypothesis that making it all about Manchin is political theater, designed to concentrate the blame where it will not hurt other Democrats, moderate Democrats, while they gain the opportunity to edit the excessively left-wing material out of the bill.

AND: Here's how WaPo is following the unfolding events this morning: "Liberal lawmakers don’t want to talk about scaling back their ambitions to revive some of what Joe Manchin killed." Oh, really?

The intense frustration emanating from the most liberal members of Congress adds an extra layer of complication for the White House and Democratic leaders who are scrambling to find a path forward to save some of the roughly $2 trillion domestic policy bill Manchin torpedoed over the weekend.

Torpoedoes and emanations! What will happen next?! All these layers.... layers of complication. It's a long story but it's rather boring and obvious.

"The breakdown comes at an especially difficult moment for Biden, whose struggle to fight the pandemic, rising inflation and supply chain problems were already gathering into a year-end maelstrom."

"Now he also faces an uproar once again in his own party. Democratic infighting was on full display on Sunday, undercutting efforts to project unity ahead of what many in the party privately believe will be an electoral wipeout. And liberal leaders who hoped to realize their longtime policy goals and campaign on the initiatives in the social spending plan were furious.... Rather than seeking to defuse hostilities as some Democrats had hoped, the White House lashed out at Manchin... [saying] that if he walks away from the talks, he would be breaking his word to Biden.... Democrats on Sunday began contemplating the far-reaching consequences. The social spending bill would make historic investments in curtailing global warming, expanding Medicare benefits and offering access to prekindergarten for all American children, among other things. Now there are new questions about how or even if Biden will be able to deliver on any of those fronts, all at a moment when the president and his party had initially hoped to reflect on a productive year and gear up for the midterms. In particular, the possibility of no legislative action on climate change sent a shudder through a party...."

From "From charm offensive to scorched earth: How Biden’s fragile alliance with Manchin unraveled" (WaPo).

Why did they hope for so much when they had a 50-50 Senate? Why did they think they'd won the support "to realize [the liberal leaders'] longtime policy goals"? 

"I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation. I’ve tried everything humanly possible. I can’t get there. This is a no."

Said Joe Manchin, quoted in "Manchin Pulls Support From Biden’s Social Policy Bill, Imperiling Its Passage/'I cannot vote to continue with this piece of legislation,' Mr. Manchin said on ‘Fox News Sunday,’ citing concerns about adding to the national debt" (NYT).

For months, Mr. Manchin had huddled privately with Mr. Biden and his top officials in an attempt to secure a compromise. His objections forced the White House to substantially curtail the scope of the package and remove certain programs, including the creation of a clean electricity program and a plan to ban new oil drilling off the Atlantic and Pacific coasts.

As early as last week, even as Mr. Biden confirmed that efforts to pass the legislation had stalled, he waxed optimistic, saying that talks with Mr. Manchin would continue and that he believed that “we will bridge our differences and advance the Build Back Better plan.”...

“They’re just trying to make the adjustment for the time to fit the money or the money to fit the time,” Mr. Manchin said. “Not changing our approach, not targeting things we should be doing.”

UPDATE:  Statement from Press Secretary Jen Psaki:

Senator Manchin’s comments this morning on FOX are at odds with his discussions this week with the President, with White House staff, and with his own public utterances.... Senator Manchin pledged repeatedly to negotiate on finalizing that framework “in good faith.”... If his comments on FOX and written statement indicate an end to that effort, they represent a sudden and inexplicable reversal in his position, and a breach of his commitments to the President and the Senator’s colleagues in the House and Senate....

"On Thursday morning... Manchin pitched his holding out on Democrats’ spending bill not just as a reflection of his conservative state, but of the country as a whole."

"We can’t go too far left,' Manchin said on CNN. 'This is not a center-left or a left country. We are a center — if anything, a little center-right country. That’s being shown, and we ought to be able to recognize that.'... The kind of people who have been bemoaning Manchin’s obstinance immediately cried foul.... As a whole, if everyone voted and the playing field were completely level, it’s evident Democrats would win more. That’s not quite the same as saying we’re a center-left country, though. As Manchin shows, electing Democrats doesn’t inherently mean you support liberal policies.... It’s also been true for a long time that many more Americans tend to view themselves as conservative than liberal.... Whether the United States is a center-right country is a very debatable proposition. And Manchin certainly has an interest in arguing that, given it would validate his position as a swing vote and his decision to hold out on the Democrats’ big spending bill...."

From "Joe Manchin suggests we’re a center-right country. Here’s what the data show" by Aaron Blake (WaPo).

"The billionaires tax, officially unveiled early Wednesday morning, may have died before the ink was dry on its 107-page text."

"Mr. Manchin, speaking with reporters, said, 'I don’t like the connotation that we’re targeting different people.... It’s time that we all pull together and grow together'.... The proposed tax would almost certainly face court challenges, but given the blockade on more conventional tax rate increases imposed by Senator Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona, Democrats have few other options for financing their domestic agenda.... If the proposal can be enacted over Mr. Manchin’s concerns, billionaires would be taxed on the unrealized gains in the value of their liquid assets, such as stocks, bonds and cash, which can grow for years as vast capital stores that can be borrowed off to live virtually income tax free. The tax would be levied on anyone with more than $1 billion in assets or more than $100 million in income for three consecutive years — which applies to about 700 people in the United States..... For people like the Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, the Amazon founder Jeff Bezos and the Tesla founder Elon Musk, that hit would be enormous, since the initial value of their horde of stocks was zero."

From "Ahead of Meeting With White House Team, Manchin Criticizes Billionaire Tax Plan" (NYT).

"It’s galling that the word 'climate' appears nowhere in Manchin’s piece, even as he piously suggests he has a divinely inspired reading of what America truly 'needs to spend.'"

"This is doubly absurd, given that he sternly lectures us about how this spending will imperil our ability to meet 'future crises.'... Manchin justifies his demand for a 'pause' on spending by citing fears of inflation. But that’s a terrible theoretical pitfall. As economist J.W. Mason told Eric Levitz, a big threat posed by inflated inflation fears is that they could become a justification for efforts to 'scale back our plans for decarbonization.' The irony, as Mason noted, is that volatile fossil fuel prices are themselves introducing 'instability into the economic system,' so inflation actually tells us that 'we need to transition faster away from fossil fuels.' Manchin is learning exactly the wrong message, threatening awful consequences."

From "Joe Manchin’s new threat to destroy Biden’s agenda is worse than it seems" by Greg Sargent (WaPo). Not quoted with approval. 

"Climb aboard the Almost Heaven, which is somewhere between a trawler and a yacht, big and boxy."

"Step inside the cabin and marvel at the creature comforts: a semicircular, plush-leather couch with a matching ottoman, glass cabinets trimmed with dark wood, a marble dining-room table with thick white candles... Below deck, the master bedroom is cozy but well-appointed.... There's a guest room.... Up on the party deck, amid the wrought-iron chairs and tables with umbrellas, you might see Trump-allied Sen. Tommy Tuberville (R-Ala.), just months removed from objecting to President Biden’s election, talking college football with Transportation Secretary Pete Buttigieg. 'Pete’s from Notre Dame,' said Tuberville.... On one evening cruise, some years back, Sen. Lisa Murkowski (R-Alaska) was so moved by the picturesque Washington skyline that she began singing 'God Bless America.'....  Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), an Almost Heaven regular, has regaled fellow passengers with 'American Pie.'... 'All I’m saying is I don’t think our Founding Fathers anticipated the survival of this democratic experiment to rest in the hands of a man who lives in a house boat,' Jenna Valle-Riestra, a press secretary for the Senate Judiciary Committee wrote in a now-deleted tweet...  [The boat is] a place where deals can be floated and bills can get watered down. Where trust can live, if fleetingly, among people whose constituents don’t trust each other at all.... For some that sounds like Almost Heaven. For other’s that’s just a nice way to describe living in limbo."

 From "Washington’s hottest club is Joe Manchin’s houseboat" (WaPo).

The name of the boat is the first 2 words of John Denver's beloved song about Joe Manchin's state. 

Does Manchin actually live on the boat? Yes, it is his residence when he is in Washington, The Washingtonian reported back in February: "Manchin lives on a boat because he doesn’t like living here." Republicans attacked him for owning an expensive boat, but it was cheap compared to the price of land-based housing in Washington.  

And John Denver didn't write that song, and the song wasn't really written about West Virginia! It's about Gaithersburg, Maryland or maybe Massachusetts:

"Some Democrats scoffed at the notion that the GOP would ever be able to deliver 10 votes needed to clear the filibuster. As of Wednesday night, they were at 11 — a number that appears likely to grow."

From "POLITICO Playbook: The inside view from the West Wing on infrastructure."

NUMBER OF THE DAY: 21. That’s how many senators now support the bipartisan infrastructure framework proposed by Sens. KYRSTEN SINEMA, JOE MANCHIN, ROB PORTMAN, BILL CASSIDY, MITT ROMNEY and the other members of their centrist group. This is big....

What does this do to the Democrat side of the equation? The fear that Sinema and Manchin will oppose a larger reconciliation package stuffed with the left’s top priorities is real.

Essentially, Democratic leaders are letting their centrists eat dessert without the veggies....

What is the dessert and what is the veggies? Seems to me the Sinema/Manchin set have a bill with just the veggies and they're saying no dessert for you lefties.

Metaphor is challenging!

"Joe Manchin’s Incoherent Case for Letting Republicans Destroy Democracy/The most powerful senator’s illogical reasoning"/"Joe Manchin’s Incoherent Case for Letting Republicans Destroy Democracy/The most powerful senator ties himself in knots."

Headlines — on the front page and atop the article — for Jonathan Chait's NY Magazine piece, which I haven't read yet. I don't believe Manchin is either "incoherent," "illogical," or "tied up in knots," but let's see what Chait is talking about:

The internal contradiction of Manchin’s position is summarized in the first two sentences [of his op-ed].... “The right to vote is fundamental to our American democracy and protecting that right should not be about party or politics.” But in the next line, he qualifies that this right can “never” be protected in a partisan fashion: “Least of all, protecting this right, which is a value I share, should never be done in a partisan manner.” Here we have two values in conflict: the right to vote, and the evil of partisan voting laws. Manchin claims the first to be “fundamental,” but if he is unwilling to violate the second value to secure it, then it clearly isn’t. Perhaps Manchin is implying that, in his hierarchy of values, bipartisanship trumps all else.

Which would make his point coherent, logical, and unknotted.

"This more than 800-page bill has garnered zero Republican support. Why?"

"Are the very Republican senators who voted to impeach Trump because of actions that led to an attack on our democracy unwilling to support actions to strengthen our democracy? Are these same senators, whom many in my party applauded for their courage, now threats to the very democracy we seek to protect? The truth, I would argue, is that voting and election reform that is done in a partisan manner will all but ensure partisan divisions continue to deepen. With that in mind, some Democrats have again proposed eliminating the Senate filibuster rule in order to pass the For the People Act with only Democratic support. They’ve attempted to demonize the filibuster and conveniently ignore how it has been critical to protecting the rights of Democrats in the past.... The Senate, its processes and rules, have evolved over time to make absolute power difficult while still delivering solutions to the issues facing our country and I believe that’s the Senate’s best quality...  Do we really want to live in an America where one party can dictate and demand everything and anything it wants, whenever it wants?"

From "Joe Manchin: Why I'm voting against the For the People Act."

Thanks, Joe. You have garnered my respect.

ADDED: No More Mr. Nice Blog writes:

If you're concerned that criticizing him for this could inspire him to switch parties and throw full Senate control to the Republicans, don't worry. He'll never do that.

So... that concern is out there. 

Prime civility bullshit headline from WaPo's Karen Tumulty: "The people concerned about Neera Tanden’s incivility sure didn’t seem to mind the Trump era’s."

I've been writing under the tag "civility bullshit" for years. It represents my longstanding opinion that calls for civility are always bullshit. Certainly in the area of politics, calls for civility always come out when the incivility is hurting your people. When somebody is deploying incivility effectively for your side, you hold your tongue and enjoy the damage. 

But let's consider the Neera Tanden problem. Her incivility is in the past. People on her side enjoyed the damage she inflicted at the time and I don't think any of her people tried to pull her back with calls for civility. It's just that now she's Biden's nominee to head the Office of Management and the Budget, and the old incivility makes her seem like too much of a political hack to be trusted in that position.

Nobody bellyaches about incivility when it's working as a weapon for their side, and the charge of incivility is another political weapon, whipped out when the other side is landing incivility punches on you. 

Here's the Karen Tumulty piece: 

With the defection of Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, [Tanden's] nomination looks to be sunk in the evenly divided Senate if she cannot win the support of at least one Republican.... [Manchin's] stated reason, the “toxic and detrimental impact” of Tanden’s “overtly partisan statements,” is hard to take at face value.