Does Joe Manchin have ice in his veins, or was his decision now so entrenched that it was no further use talking to the Biden White House? Maybe it's a little bit of both. I can only imagine the pressure this office endured.
Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) knows this as well, as she is Manchin's partner in crime in blocking left-wing action items. She had to deal with activists following her into the bathroom, extreme harassment that Joe Biden said was just part of the process. Remember that? Politico had the scoop, but it seemed that Manchin's decision to kill Joe Biden's domestic agenda before Christmas caught the White House totally off guard.
According to Ryan Lizza and Rachael Bade, White House staffers tried to phone Manchin to talk him out of it. He refused to take their call. His mind was made up—and the West Virginia Democrat also sent an aide to tell the Biden crew that he intended to "put a bullet in Build Back Better" (via Politico):
Less than 30 minutes before he killed the Democratic Party’s most important piece of legislation, an aide was dispatched by Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.Va.) to give the White House and congressional leadership a heads up.
The senator himself was about to go live and was prepping for his interview with BRET BAIER on “Fox News Sunday.” He was out of town with family and doing the hit via satellite, but still had his best Sunday show attire. He wore a red tie and pin-striped suit. His hair looked perfect. It would probably be one of the most viral video clips of his long career.
At the White House, there was panic and disbelief. He sent an aide to tell the president of the United States that he was about to go on Fox News and put a bullet in BBB?
Top White House officials scrambled to call the senator and talk him out of what he was about to do.
“We tried to head him off,” a senior White House official told Playbook, but Manchin “refused to take a call from White House staff.”
[…]
Manchin didn’t give Baier a heads up about the news he was about to break.
There was a long wind up about all the efforts the senator says he’s made:
“Well, Bret, you know, this is a mammoth piece of legislation, and I have had my reservations from the beginning when they heard about it a five and half months ago and I’ve been working diligently every day, every minute of every day, I’ve been working on this, meeting with — whether it’d be the president, President [JOE] BIDEN, whether it’d be Majority Leader [CHUCK] SCHUMER and his staff, whether it would be with NANCY PELOSI, all of my colleagues. I mean, from all different spectrums of the political spectrum, if you will, from the right to the left. I’ve done everything humanly possible.”
— The Right To Bear Memes (@grandoldmemes) December 15, 2021
"I've tried everything humanly possible. I can't get there," Manchin added. He also knows that there are a ton of Acela Corridor liberals and left-wingers mad at him, but he's ironclad in his position. He was able to stick to his guns for the simple reason that he's from West Virginia, where voters are not Biden people—and they're dead-set against any legislation that continues to take the sledgehammer to coal power. Leah covered this today. Manchin also added that this bill collapsed because the whackos added action items to the legislation that were unacceptable.
We might have been saved from full-blown socialism...thanks to Democratic infighting.
Sinema-Manchin was the firewall that saved the county. Funny how things pan out.