How do you solve a problem like Joe Manchin?
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With the passage of the COVID stimulus package today, Democrats took one step towards meeting some of their major campaign promises, while also placing one of their other major promises, the $15 minimum wage, in jeopardy. At the heart of this conflict is Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia who, as by far the most conservative member of the Democratic party, ultimately holds enormous negotiating power as the pivotal member of the Senate. Manchin is the major impediment towards ending the filibuster, and was significant in behind-the-scenes deals to limit payoff amounts and eligibility for stimulus checks, as well as limiting payoff amounts for unemployment.
Manchin will continue to remain a major impediment to the wishes of Democrats, especially those in the left wing of the party, for the rest of the 117th Congress. This frustrating set of events already has Democrats discussing what can be done about Manchin. In this article, I review the options Democrats have for dealing with him. I conclude that Democrats’ likely best-case scenario is using strategy to get Manchin to end the filibuster, but they will still have to deal with Manchin as a negotiating partner for the remainder of the term, which will significantly and inevitably compromise their legislative agenda. Below, I separate the potential strategies into two broad categories — working against Manchin, or working with him — and conclude with a look at how the 2022 election could alter the existing leverage in the Senate.
Strategy 1: Hardball
Version A: Reconciliation Parliamentary Politics — The $15 minimum wage law was included in the stimulus package through the reconciliation process. This process uses something known as the “Byrd Rule”, which allows some types of legislation that directly impact the budget in a more-than-incidental way to bypass the 60-vote filibuster requirement. The only reason, for instance, that Democrats were able to pass the $1.9 trillion stimulus package at all is because they used reconciliation to avoid the Republican block. The $15 minimum wage was removed from the package after the parliamentarian ruled that it violated the Byrd Rule (it almost certainly does).
Some have suggested that, in order to get a $15 minimum wage into the COVID relief package, Vice President Harris as presiding officer could have overruled the parliamentarian. While it is true that the presiding officer can overrule the parliamentarian, who has no real power, the Senate is not a dictatorship — Harris could only do it with the support of the entire rest of her coalition.
Here’s the exact sequence that would prevent her from overruling the parliamentarian: as they proceed with the legislation, any opposed senator (Manchin, Sinema, or any Republican) would raise a point of order that the inclusion of the minimum wage law violates the Byrd Rule. The presiding officer, presumably Harris in this case, would overrule the point of order. The senator would then appeal the ruling of the chair to the floor, a procedure which allows no debate and therefore requires a simple majority for passage. Manchin and/or Sinema would then vote with the Republican bloc, the measure would be defeated 48–52, and minimum wage would be stripped from the bill.
Neither Manchin nor Sinema would be forced to face the up/down vote on COVID+minimum wage, because they could (and would) avoid it through simple procedure. This vote would be much easier to later defend to their constituents, as it is easy to frame as a “rule of law” vote.
Version B: Reconciliation Legislative Politics — Others have suggested that Democrats could have kept $15 minimum wage in the bill by rewriting the law in a way that wouldn’t violate the Byrd Rule. For instance, they could effectively create a $15 minimum wage by placing a 100% payroll tax on all labor paid at wages below $15.
Let’s ignore for a moment the awful messaging campaign this will open Democrats to in 2022 — Republicans would be able to claim that Democrats are pursuing “socialistic 100% tax” policies (and yes, that’s obviously bullshit, but it’s what’ll happen). Instead, let’s focus on whether or not this results in a $15 minimum wage. It does not. Manchin and/or Sinema would then vote against this version of the bill based on their stated preferences, and the bill would fail 48–52.
Again, both Manchin and Sinema would be able to sell this to their voters as “doing honest work” and “avoiding weird tricks to get around the law”. It doesn’t matter if you agree with this characterization — it’ll work with their base. It will certainly work better than the alternative, which is the charge by their 2024 opponents that they “supported 100% taxes on small businesses.”
Version C: Going Public on Manchin — Another option would be to have Biden, Schumer or outside groups publicly highlight as much as possible that Manchin is refusing to pass a $15 minimum wage as supported by a majority of the public. Ultimately, this is a non-starter for the reasons I listed before as, in the stimulus battle, Manchin is fully able to hide behind procedure as his reason for opposing a minimum wage increase.
For the sake of argument, let’s imagine that Manchin alone could vote to raise the minimum wage to $15. Even then, this would likely be difficult. The polling that shows support for the $15 minimum wage by West Virginians likely overstates effective support for two reasons: First, Republicans have not yet had to message against it in West Virginia or nationally, but they would if they had to, and the fear they would raise is that a $15 minimum wage would create even greater widespread unemployment in West Virginia, as many businesses would be unable to pay those wages. Regardless of the merits of this argument, it would resonate with a lot of West Virginians. Second, Manchin would have the opportunity to address his voters and explain his objections to the $15 minimum wage over his concern that their jobs would be destroyed, and he’d offer an $11 minimum wage as a compromise that raises their standard of living without getting them all laid off. For West Virginians, this would likely be a successful appeal.
Version D: Manchin Pressure Campaign — Still others have suggested that to get Manchin in line, Biden and/or Schumer need to “get tough” with him in the way that old Senate leaders like Mansfield or Johnson would when they needed to whip extra votes. The primary problem with this is the lack of leverage Democratic leaders realistically have over Manchin, especially compared to the leverage the Democratic Senate leaders of the 1960s and 1970s had.
Manchin is pulling off something of a minor miracle by even existing as a West Virginia Senate Democrat in 2021. West Virginia is a deep red state that voted for Trump over Biden by a margin of 43 percent in 2020. Manchin, by contrast, won reelection in 2018 by about 3 percent. A 46 percent swing away from presidential numbers is essentially unheard of outside of compromised candidate-party candidates (e.g. Roy Moore). Manchin is likely the last elected Democrat from West Virginia for the next several decades, and he knows it. His recipe for success is entirely unlinked from the resources of the Democratic party.
Manchin faces reelection in 2024, and he has three choices. First, he can leave the Senate, choosing to either retire or run again for the West Virginia governor’s office. If this is his ultimate intention, then Democrats have no leverage over him whatsoever, even by trying to appeal to West Virginia public opinion. Manchin will leave office doing what he wants. Second, he can choose to run again as a Democrat, in which case his successful reelection will depend entirely on him threading the needle in the way that he has over the past 15 years. Any pressure from the left will actually help him make his case to his constituents that he operates from the center. Any Democrat who tries to primary him will lose and only help strengthen his case as a moderate in the general. Even if a more left-leaning Democrat were somehow to miraculously win, they would almost certainly lose in the general election, probably by high double-digits. Manchin’s campaign funds and endorsements cannot meaningfully be threatened by the leadership because he does not need them and, in fact, probably welcomes such a fight to play up his centrist bonafides.
Third, and most concerning, Manchin could always choose to leave the Democratic party. This is, of course, exactly what happened the last time the leadership of a party with narrow 50–50 control of the Senate tried to play hardball — in 2001, Jim Jeffords left the Republican party, became a Democrat-caucusing Independent, and the Republicans lost the Senate majority. If Democrats were to overplay their hand in the next several months by targeting him too frequently and/or harshly, becoming an Independent or Republican would increasingly look like an attractive option to him. If, for instance, the Republican party offered to withhold support for a serious challenger to his seat in 2024 in exchange for him becoming an Independent-caucusing Republican, or offered to guarantee his nomination in the Republican primary in exchange for becoming Republican nominally, I think he’d win reelection in either of those conditions. In fact, all he’d be doing is bringing his own partisanship much more in line with his own constituents. The more Democrats attack him, the more he’s going to consider doing this. And if that happens, President Biden will have to figure out how to work with a Republican-controlled Senate under Majority Leader McConnell as early as within the next few months. This would be a disaster.
Strategy 2: Appeasement
Version A: Cornhusker Kickback II — If you can’t beat Manchin, then another option would be to try to appease him as much as possible, and use what he wants as a negotiating tool for getting more of what the rest of the party wants. Given that Manchin’s case in West Virginia is so specific, I have a hard time imagining that Democrats would be able to make a deal with him on anything that wasn’t fairly heavily targeted to West Virginians, either in name or industry.
The top of Manchin’s list would probably be some explicit backroom promise to not make any aggressive movement on climate change, as a way to prop up the coal industry in his state. It could also involve a variety of funding kickbacks to West Virginia. The former would be untouchable by Democrats, as doing that would alienate the rest of the party coalition completely. The latter is possible, but it would create the same kind of negative attention for Democrats that the “Cornhusker Kickback” did back in 2011 during the passage of Obamacare. It would also lead Sinema and maybe some of the other borderline Democrats to become much more aggressive in demanding their own kickbacks. This is probably not a road Democrats want to walk down, at least not yet.
Version B: Use Manchin to End the Filibuster — I think this is the only strategy the Democrats can realistically pursue to get any semblance of what they want in the next few years. Manchin matters less when it comes to legislating generally than does the filibuster, and right now Manchin and Sinema are probably all that stands between us and ending the filibuster. If Democrats are clever with strategy, they may be able to at least solve the filibuster problem, even if they can’t solve the Manchin problem.
Manchin is on record, repeatedly, saying that he opposes ending the filibuster because he believes that meaningful compromise can be reached with Republicans. He either a) genuinely believes this, or b) is using this as an excuse to not end the filibuster. Regardless of which is true, his own stated logic is based on Republicans being viable negotiating partners. If Manchin can be disabused of this notion, especially in a way that involves directly compromising his own agenda, he might be persuaded to end the filibuster…and any sequence of events that would cause him to abandon his opposition would also likely lead to Sinema abandoning hers.
Democrats should identify a set of major policy battles in which a large majority of the American public, including his own voters, is on one side, but on which Republicans are opposed. One option I already mentioned would be an $11 minimum wage, which Manchin is on record supporting, and for which there would not be ten additional Republicans to overcome the filibuster. Another would be HR1, the voting reform package passing into the Senate right now.
The party leadership should purposefully allow Manchin to play a central role in developing these legislative items, and several others, in the Senate, resulting in a Republican filibuster. Manchin should not be given this role because the Democrats like it, or because it will generate ideal policy, but because it will result in an outcome of long-term strategic value.
Three things could happen upon giving Manchin a major role in the Democrats’ negotiating process, and him being met with Republican resistance. First, Manchin could accept the stalemate, and live with never getting any deals made. However, if he did this, he’d be stuck with the full responsibility of having got nothing done, even when the left wing of his party backed off and let him try to strike deals with Republicans. This would make it much more difficult for him to be confident in his ability to remain popular with his base in West Virginia. Second, Manchin could make a deal with the Republicans to significantly weaken any of these packages. This would be a legitimate concern, as he could then vote with them on these packages and pass highly diluted legislation over the objections of the rest of the Democrats. If he tried doing this on major legislation, Manchin would essentially be showing his unwillingness to remain a committed Democrat for much longer anyway. Third, Manchin, finally disillusioned with the notion of Republican compromise and having publicly exhausted all other options that secure a reelection narrative, agrees with the rest of the Democratic party to end the filibuster.
I’m certainly unable to make any guarantees that the above gambit would be successful, but I also don’t have an idea that would improve upon it either.
A Post-Filibuster 117th Congress
In the absolute best-case scenario, what I just described occurs, and Democrats abolish the filibuster. Now what?
The Manchin problem remains essentially unchanged. Manchin is the pivotal member of the Senate, and cannot really be leveraged out of that position of power. At the very least, Democrats would now be able to pursue policy negotiations entirely internally, without having to worry about the spectre of minority disruption. Democrats would still probably have to get used to the idea of something less than a $15 minimum wage, if Manchin were to oppose it, which he probably would. Their best bet would probably be some sort of deal involving regional variation, which would allow states like West Virginia to stay at something like a $11 minimum while states with higher median wages would be brought up to the $15 minimum. On other matters of policy, Manchin would still likely remain the pivotal vote through 2022.
One deal that could be made would be to aggressively pursue DC statehood. Now that the filibuster is dead, the Democrats would be able to unilaterally make DC the 51st state with simple majority votes in the House and the Senate, and a signature from Biden. Doing this would buy Democrats two additional (permanent) votes in the Senate, and reduce the reliance on Manchin somewhat. Manchin is already on record as open to DC statehood, which helps. Puerto Rican statehood may be a tougher sell, but given their recent vote of approval for statehood, Democrats could at least test the waters. Four additional seats would be seismic.
Beyond this, Democrats may not have an option that doesn’t involve seeking Manchin’s legislative approval until the 2022 midterm election. The party would have the opportunity to pick up seats here, reducing their dependence on Manchin, but they would be doing so during a midterm election, and the party in the White House has only picked up seats in the midterm once in the last fifty years, shortly after 9/11. However, given the problems Republicans face within their own base in terms of turnout, and multiple Republican retirements (Toomey in Pennsylvania; Portman in Ohio; Burr in North Carolina; Johnson in Wisconsin, maybe), Democrats have a fighting chance. Expanding the Senate coalition would likely mean defending two recent toss-up seats (Warnock in Georgia; Kelly in Arizona) and avoiding unnecessary bleeding in other tight seats (Hassan in New Hampshire; Cortez Masto in Nevada), while picking up one of the four Republican retiree seats. In the best case scenario, I cannot see Democrats picking up more than two seats (winning PA and WI, while defending one or both of Kelly/Warnock). In the worst case scenario, Democrats lose all eight toss-up seats, and are left with a 46–54 minority while also likely losing the House.
Conclusion
For those with a progressive agenda, a Manchin-controlled Senate probably does not seem like a massive improvement over a filibuster-blocked Senate, and more sympathetic to that attitude I could not be. But the simple reality is that Manchin IS the pivotal member of the Senate, and therefore the pivotal player in all federal policy development until at least 2023, barring DC statehood. In the meantime, Democrats will almost certainly have to choose between a half-loaf and no loaf at all. This is, of course, the deal that has, fairly, disgusted many progressives for decades. And yet, given the chips placed on the board, a better deal may not exist.
