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There are two responses to this observation by Senator Maizie Hirono (D-HI), who along with some of her Senate Democrat colleagues want to de-escalate matters with Joe Manchin — a little. Rather than blame Manchin for torpedoing yet another Build Back Something or Anything At All proposal, Hirono offers up a hate-the-game-not-the-player critique of the Senate itself.

Apparently the thrill of majority control is gone:

Still, even at this point, Democrats were wary of criticizing Manchin directly. No one seemed interested in stripping Manchin of his Energy Committee chairmanship, as Sen. Martin Heinrich (D-N.M.) floated last week.

  • Sen. Debbie Stabenow (D-Mich.): “You know what? I’m done talking about my colleague from West Virginia. I am going to be talking about how we do the things we need to get done like CHIPs.”
  • Sen. Mazie Hirono (D-Hawaii), asked if she thought Manchin should lose the gavel: “Not particularly. The fact that the 50-50 Senate sucks is what I’m focused on … I think [with] a lot of these questions I get from you all, I always come back to the 50-50 Senate sucks.”
  • Whitehouse: “I’m not here to say anything about Senator Manchin, particularly not when you compare and contrast [with] what the entire Senate Republican [conference] has been up to for a decade — and what the fossil fuel industry has been doing, essentially corrupting our democracy in order to blockade climate progress.” He declined to weigh in on the chairmanship question: “I don’t see any productive results from that,” he said.

First response: let’s not forget how we got to a 50/50 Senate in the first place. Republicans looked like a good bet to hold onto at least one of the Georgia seats in the December 2020 runoff, only to have Donald Trump and his allies step all over those races in his attacks on Georgia’s voting system. Democrats promptly promised their base the moon based on the same 50/50-plus-Kamala Harris calculus that Hirono now says “sucks.”

The problem in this case isn’t the 50/50 Senate; it’s that Democrats ignored that math to push a radical-progressive agenda while Joe Biden fancied himself the reincarnation of FDR to the LBJ power. Joe Manchin and other moderates were always a part of that coalition in the majority caucus. Competent political leadership would have worked closely with Manchin and others to set expectations of what was possible and worked to deliver that, including picking up opportunities to triangulate the GOP’s agenda where any overlap existed.

Democratic leadership, to put it mildly, missed that opportunity. The only win they got other than the inflationary American Rescue Plan — passed without Republican support — was the bipartisan infrastructure bill. Democratic leadership, boosted by Joe Biden himself, held that hostage for months while trying to steamroll Manchin into spending another $5 trillion or more on the radical progressive agenda while inflation started skyrocketing. Biden, Chuck Schumer, and Nancy Pelosi turned a win on governance into an embarrassing loss.

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It’s not the 50/50 Senate that sucks, in other words. It’s the Democrats’ leadership — and not just Joe Biden.

That finally brings us to the second response: You won’t have to worry about it for much longer, Senator Hirono. You’re welcome.

Meanwhile, it appears that a day of venting at Manchin has given way to a glum recognition that they’re stuck with him. A number of people demanded yesterday that Schumer strip him of his chair position on the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee as a punishment, but it might have finally occurred to Manchin’s colleagues that such a move would convince him that a 50/50 Senate sucks too — and he has the ability to change that math in an instant. Be careful what you wish for …

Although on that score, let me leave you with this potential development. Hmmm.

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