this post was submitted on 03 Oct 2023
845 points (98.3% liked)

News

23284 readers
3513 users here now

Welcome to the News community!

Rules:

1. Be civil


Attack the argument, not the person. No racism/sexism/bigotry. Good faith argumentation only. This includes accusing another user of being a bot or paid actor. Trolling is uncivil and is grounds for removal and/or a community ban. Do not respond to rule-breaking content; report it and move on.


2. All posts should contain a source (url) that is as reliable and unbiased as possible and must only contain one link.


Obvious right or left wing sources will be removed at the mods discretion. We have an actively updated blocklist, which you can see here: https://lemmy.world/post/2246130 if you feel like any website is missing, contact the mods. Supporting links can be added in comments or posted seperately but not to the post body.


3. No bots, spam or self-promotion.


Only approved bots, which follow the guidelines for bots set by the instance, are allowed.


4. Post titles should be the same as the article used as source.


Posts which titles don’t match the source won’t be removed, but the autoMod will notify you, and if your title misrepresents the original article, the post will be deleted. If the site changed their headline, the bot might still contact you, just ignore it, we won’t delete your post.


5. Only recent news is allowed.


Posts must be news from the most recent 30 days.


6. All posts must be news articles.


No opinion pieces, Listicles, editorials or celebrity gossip is allowed. All posts will be judged on a case-by-case basis.


7. No duplicate posts.


If a source you used was already posted by someone else, the autoMod will leave a message. Please remove your post if the autoMod is correct. If the post that matches your post is very old, we refer you to rule 5.


8. Misinformation is prohibited.


Misinformation / propaganda is strictly prohibited. Any comment or post containing or linking to misinformation will be removed. If you feel that your post has been removed in error, credible sources must be provided.


9. No link shorteners.


The auto mod will contact you if a link shortener is detected, please delete your post if they are right.


10. Don't copy entire article in your post body


For copyright reasons, you are not allowed to copy an entire article into your post body. This is an instance wide rule, that is strictly enforced in this community.

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 61 points 1 year ago (3 children)

He's a dem who doesn't seem to share any views with other Dems.

He singlehandedly delayed or outright prevented many large bills from going through.

When Bidens term is looked back upon, Manchin will be the force that prevented Biden from pushing though some of his more progressive plans.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

He doesn't always vote with the democrats, but if a republican had won that seat, they would be much more likely to side with the republicans.

He hasn't done anything single-handedly, in every case where he gets blamed, it's because there's a huge Republican minority opposing something and he joins them. You can never blame him unless you're first blaming all the Republicans he's joining.

He's a lightning rod because people think that for some reason he should vote with the democrats every time, but that's not realistic. He's a democrat from a very conservative state. The problem isn't Manchin, it's that they have to rely on Manchin and Sinema so much. If the democrats had a firm majority, his votes wouldn't matter. Instead he's often the deciding vote on something, so if he doesn't support it it fails. But, again, it would be worse if a Republican had won instead. Right now the senate is 51/49, and the Democrats can occasionally pass things. If Manchin had lost it would be 50/50 and they'd virtually never pass anything.

When people look back at Biden's term, they'll note that it was the Republican who blocked everything, and that the 51/49 senate was too close to pass anything meaningful. Sinema and Manchin will probably get a mention, but anybody objective will note that it was the Republicans who blocked things, not Manchin and Sinema.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Democrats can actually pass bills 50/50: if the US Senate ever has a tie vote, the Vice President gets to pick a winner.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Which was 100% predictable and expected.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 1 year ago

Including the fact that there are plenty of other Democratic senators who believe the same shit he does and vote accordingly but he's doing what he agreed to do as the public whipping boy.

[–] [email protected] 7 points 1 year ago

There are two things he's useful for: having a Democrat as Senate Majority Leader, and he actually does side with Dems on voting rights most of the time (even co-sponsoring bills). That's it. Other than that, might as well let the seat fall to a Republican for all the good he does.

With his position as swing vote, Manchin is arguably the most powerful person in the world. He's doing fuck all with that power besides obstructing things. If I were a W. Virginia voter with sense, I would be asking how he's using his position to help W. Virginia. You want to bring jobs and industry and sweet government pork to your state, Joe? You're in a prime position to do it.