Which Joe runs America? Coal-state Democrat blocks Biden

Kamala Harris was visibly irritated by the question. ‘Is it Joe Biden or Joe Manchin’ who is the real president, she was asked.

West Virginia Democrat senator Joe Manchin is said to be enjoying ‘this fleeting moment of power’. Picture: AFP.

The US Vice-President was visibly irritated by the question that a television interviewer put to her on Friday. “I want to know who the real president of this country is,” asked Charlamagne Tha God. “Is it Joe Biden, or Joe Manchin?”

For all Kamala Harris’s indignation it is a question that much of America is beginning to ponder.

Manchin, a Democratic senator from West Virginia, has refused to toe the party line on everything from the President’s public spending bill to climate change and voting rights. His intransigence has put him at odds with his colleagues on Capitol Hill and the White House. It has also made him the most powerful man in Washington.

With the Democrats and Republicans tied on 50 senators each (the Vice-President has the casting vote), the administration is dependent on loyal votes from everyone on its side of the aisle to pass the Biden agenda.

The White House needs Manchin more than Manchin needs the White House. And Manchin, 74, knows it.

“He likes the independence and this fleeting moment of power,” says John Kilwein, professor of political science at West Virginia University. “He’s completely in control. He’s his own boss, but he also believes he is pursuing good policy and grounding Washington in ‘fly-over country’ commonsense values.”

Manchin’s office ignored a request for an interview, but in the past he has explained his approach in simple terms. “I have always said that if I can’t go home and explain it, I can’t vote for it,” he told Newsweek in August.

West Virginia is where the newer, diverse left-wing tendencies of the modern Democratic party rub up against deeply held conservative values, where the federal government is viewed with suspicion and promises of a carbon-free future conflict with a still powerful coal industry.

Once a Democratic stronghold thanks to strong trade unions, the state was an easy win for Donald Trump, who took 68 per cent of the vote against Biden last year. It has not backed a Democrat presidential candidate since 1996. Manchin is the only Democrat to represent it in congress or hold statewide office.

West Virginians support Manchin’s stand against the Biden agenda. Last month a poll by Republican pollsters of all voters showed that Manchin enjoys a 61 per cent approval rating.

“Voters want to be listened to. When they feel like you’re listening to them, they will reward that either at the polls or in numbers like this,” Mark Blankenship, who ran the poll, said on local radio. “I think what’s recognised here is that Senator Manchin is listening to the people of West Virginia.”

Biden’s poll ratings are stuck below 50 per cent and he needs more to show for his time in office before the midterm elections in November next year when Democrats could lose both houses of congress. The party has pinned its hopes on Biden’s Build Back Better spending bill, which includes climate measures, child tax credits, extensions of state health insurance and other social provisions. Its price tag has already been almost halved at the insistence of Manchin and other moderates but on Thursday night Biden conceded that the $US2 trillion ($2.81 trillion) package would not be passed by Christmas as planned. “I believe that we will bridge our differences,” the President said.

Some Democrats have been less generous. Dick Durbin, the Senate majority whip, said he has been left “stunned” and “frustrated” by Manchin’s stance.

Others, especially on the left, depict Manchin as an out-of-touch dinosaur who risks sinking the party.

“Mr Manchin and the Republicans and anybody else who thinks that struggling working families who are having a hard time raising their kids today should not be able to continue to get the help that they have, then that’s their view and they’ve got to come forward to the American people and say, ‘Hey, we don’t think you need help’,” said Bernie Sanders.

One crucial point of tension between Washington and West Virginia, which explains Manchin’s reticence on measures designed to check climate change, is the state’s coal industry. In a campaign video in 2010 when he first arrived in the Senate, the then governor famously fired a rifle at a copy of an Obama-era climate bill.

Biden has tried in vain to win over his colleague, even showing Manchin around his home in Wilmington, Delaware, during a meeting in the northern autumn. That has not stopped others turning the screw, however, and reports of Manchin’s financial links to the coal industry last week had all the hallmarks of a political hit job.

“You got a problem?” Manchin asked reporters in September about the hundreds of thousands of dollars he earns each year from his family’s coal business. “I have been in a blind trust for 20 years. I have no idea what they’re doing.”

Yet, as The Washington Post revealed, documents filed by the senator show the blind trust is too small to account for all his reported earnings from the company. Enersystems paid him $US492,000 in interest, dividends and other income last year. His share of the firm is worth up to $US5m.

Manchin set up a blind trust with $US350,000 in cash nine years ago. In his latest financial disclosure report, the senator reported that the Joseph Manchin III Qualified Blind Trust earned no more than $US15,000 last year and is worth a maximum of $US1m. His office declined to respond to questions about the blind trust or his earnings from it.

Manchin has cemented his role as his party’s obstacle in chief but optimists in Democrat ranks still hope that he will find it in him to back Biden’s legacy bill in some form to stave off a rout by Republicans next year.

“I can’t think of another time when a single member of congress has held such a balance of power, because we very rarely have this situation in the Senate,” said Matt Bennett, executive vice-president of Third Way, a centre-left think tank.

“The modern Republican Party doesn’t really believe in anything except Donald Trump, while the Democrats believe in everything – it’s a very broad coalition. The President has had to scramble to keep everyone in the tent and it’s very difficult.

“I think they will do it, even Manchin will find a way of agreeing to it.”

The Sunday Times