Why Are Liberals Mad At Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema?
They Are Doing Their Jobs
Remember John McCain? How about his buddy Lindsey Graham? Today, Republicans have Liz Cheney, the establishment Democrat's current favorite Republican (along with her war criminal father). These are simply the Republican versions of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema. Liberals absolutely loved John McCain until he got the Republican nomination when, drum roll please, they totally turned on him. And, of course they were going to. Republicans today are Manchin and Sinema fans. No one realizes that both parties are exactly the same.
Liberals are furious at Manchin and Sinema these days. Which is funny if you follow politics at all because liberals love Republican traitors (what Republicans call RINOs, Republican In Name Only). Liberals are funny that way. Joe Manchin is the Democrat's version of John McCain. Both have done their establishment job very well. Both parties have these types of people and their only job is to make sure that nothing the establishment opposes ever gets passed (things like universal healthcare or free college or, God Forbid, any reduction in defense and homeland security spending).
Most elected members of the Democrat Party are fine with Joe Manchin, et al, as much as regular Republican establishment elected hacks are fine with John McCain, Liz Cheney, et al. They scream and yell to assure the masses, while privately are thrilled. Even Bernie Sanders and The Squad are generally fine with them because they provide cover for the seeming inability of so-called progressives to get anything for the people done in any Democrat administration going all the way back to Lyndon Johnson, the last FDR type president (he gave us Medicare, something that would never pass either party today).
Regarding the Democrat Party specifically, the people who hate the Manchins and Sinemas of the country are the working class supporters of the party who believe that their representatives should do things that help regular Americans rather than increasing the defense budget $25 billion more than the president asked for. All the while whining that anything that helps the people is way too expensive. It is so transparent, but the corporate media keeps pretending they are for things that they actually oppose. Smoke and mirrors, always smoke and mirrors, all to our detriment.
Both parties have people like this and they tend to continually get reelected. They are usually in safe districts and have a lock in their states on reelection. I am from South Carolina, a red state. Most people here say they hate Lindsey Graham, yet he always gets reelected in a landslide. He has outside money and a total lock on the Republican Party in the state. No sane politician dares to run against him in a primary. And he always gets overwhelmingly reelected. It is much the same story in the other states where these operatives are from. The national parties also always support these people. It is very hard to get rid of them. That is by design.
So, what exactly is the job of these Senators who constantly vote against the desires of their rank and file party members? They even get some controlled criticism from the corporate media and the president. Just enough criticism to make people think the criticism is serious. It isn't. Four years of lies about Russian collusion was serious. Making sure Bernie Sanders didn't get the Democrat nomination in 2016 and 2020 was serious. Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema voting against Build Back Better or John McCain voting against the repeal of Obamacare generates completely milquetoast criticism. It is all for show. Smoke and mirrors, my favorite phrase.
These folks serve the interests of the donor class and the desires of the single party system in the US:
The major thing they do is ensure nothing substantial ever gets passed that helps regular people because such legislation might slow down the funneling of money from the poor and middle classes to the rich. In 2022, rich folks and corporations do not even think about sharing any of their wealth with the workers that make that wealth possible. See my post about historic top tax rates and the height of the American middle class for a glimpse into this:
Possibly more important, these people provide cover for Senators and House Representatives pretending to be progressives. A NO vote from Joe Manchin allows AOC and The Squad and Bernie Sanders to cast meaningless YEA votes that they can brag about and blame others when the bill(s) never pass. Such votes cast are done with full knowledge that the bill will never pass. This helps maintain the illusion that there are some members of Congress that are progressive.
Finally, it also stimulates the illusion that the two parties are different. This makes any attempt at starting a viable third party completely impossible. The Joe Biden administration has gotten nothing done and he was a Republican lite his entire career. The 1994 Republican Contract With America also got very little done outside of Newt Gingrich continually bragging about how much they did.
Meanwhile, just as an aside, when was the last time you heard universal healthcare or free college mentioned? Yep, that’s right, one of the reasons Bernie was more opposed by the DNC than Trump was. Even if Sleepy Joe were to mention them (and he never has and never will), he always knows that he has Joe Manchin and Krysten Sinema around to make sure they never happen. And the donors stay happy and the money keeps flowing.
The bottom line is that, outside of starting wars, propping up the stock market, and moving money from poor to rich, neither party wants to do a damn thing.