Joe Manchin just caved
Joe Manchin just announced that he’ll vote “yes” today to proceed with debate on HR1. That still won’t get it over the hump. But it means he’s continuing to cave. Remember when he said he’d never support HR1? The pressure we’ve all been putting on him is working. Keep it up, he’ll keep caving. Sinema too.
This is why Schumer forced a preliminary vote today. Manchin was clearly afraid of what we’ll do to him if he voted “no” so he’s voting yes. Now he’s married to HR1. It’ll make it easier for us to push him into exempting HR1 from the filibuster. The pressure is working.
The specifics of what they’re voting on today don’t matter, since it won’t succeed today anyway. The point was to back Manchin and Sinema into a corner, and force them on the record today, so we can ramp up our ground game from here.
“But Manchin is just voting this way to try to get us off his back…” Yes, and that’s the entire point. We applied pressure, so he took a big step in caving – thus proving he’s the type to cave under sufficient pressure. Now we apply more pressure, and he’ll take more steps in caving. It’s just leverage.
Now that Manchin is voting “yes” on moving forward with HR1 today, if Sinema is only Democrat to vote no, she’ll be unleashing holy hell against herself. She’ll face nationwide protests and massive pressure. Is she that stupid? Maybe. But we’ll get her to cave in the end anyway.
