In Praise of Joe Manchin

Liberals hated the Supreme Court and the filibuster. Now those things are among the last lines of defense against an authoritarian state.

Donald Trump had a plan: flood the zone. He made so many moves on so many fronts in so little time that he tripped all the circuits of outrage.

In what we used to think of as normal times, any one of these things would have been cause for impeachment proceedings, special prosecutors and massive protests in the streets. The richest man on earth, who has no official position and was not subject to Senate confirmation, is shutting down entire agencies and demanding personal information on millions of Americans. Trump has fired Justice Department lawyers and FBI agents simply because they did their jobs in investigating Trump for his crimes.

I could go on. And on. And on. But you have the picture. I hate to give this man and his henchmen any credit, but as a pure political strategy it was a smart thing to do. It has been called a “blitzkrieg” and isn’t that the most appropriate word for this administration?

But there’s still hope. Our system can still rally to defeat this guy.

The first step is the courts. As of this writing, something like 40 lawsuits have been filed and injunctions have been issued to stop some of Trump’s worst abuses. Most of these cases will eventually arrive at the Supreme Court. We know that there are three Justices who will stand up for the rule of law and two who won’t. The question is what the other four — Chief Justice John Roberts and Justices Amy Coney Barrett, Brett Kavanaugh and Neil Gorsuch — will do. I have some confidence in Roberts, but he needs to pull at least one of the others over to his side to stop Trump.

Next we have the narrow House majority. Speaker Mike “Lap Dog” Johnson can only afford to lose a couple of votes or risk not serving fries with Trump’s orders. And there may be enough moderate Republicans from swing districts who will put their own jobs ahead of loyalty to Trump. It’ll have to come down to that because the notion that a separate branch of government should stick up for itself is gone under these Republicans. They take orders from the White House.

Let me digress here for a moment. One of the things Trump is supposed to represent is some kind of masculine bravado, and yet Johnson and other Republican girly men in the House have been completely emasculated by Trump. Don’t you find that odd? I find that odd.

Anyway, back to the checks and balances. The last of those is the Senate filibuster. Let’s say the courts strike down a slew of Trump’s executive orders on the basis that he’s assuming powers granted to Congress. Let’s say Trump just ignores and defies the courts, as he’s already suggested he will. Unless we’re in for a full-on Constitutional crisis where the military has to choose between obeying the commander-in-chief and being true to their sworn duty to uphold the Constitution (and we may well be heading for that), that means Trump will have to get some of this stuff through both houses. Let’s say Johnson gets his votes. Now, it’ll take 60 votes on at least some of these items to get through the Senate. And the Republicans only have 53 seats.

Ok, another digression. When they had the slimmest of majorities in the Senate, liberals wanted to eliminate the filibuster. I argued against that because the tables always turn. A maneuver used to block liberal policies could just as easily be used to block conservatives ones. The champion of the filibuster was Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia, who made that very case. Liberals hated Manchin, but I pointed out that if it wasn’t for the fact that he won in a state that went for Trump by 36 points there wouldn’t be any Democratic majority at all. And all of those big liberal spending programs that Manchin pushed back on? They wouldn’t have even been in play under Mitch McConnell. If anything, I wish Manchin had pushed back even harder because all that spending contributed to the inflation that helped put Trump back in the White House.

There. Have I said ‘I told you so’ in clear enough terms?

So those three things — the courts, the narrow House majority and the filibuster — could stop much of the damage Trump is trying to inflict. And two of those things — the power of the Supreme Court and the filibuster — were attacked by liberals as impediments to liberal policies. Turns out they could also save us.

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Free speech.

The rule of law.

Reason.

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Pluralism.