Bipartisanship?

It seems that the war against voting is over, and voting lost . . . after Joe Manchin dropped the big one.

Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia who has enormous power - something that might not have happened if North Carolina Democratic Senate candidate Cal Cunningham hadn't been caught sexting and the party had a 51-49 majority in the Senate - ruled out voting for the voting rights bill the House passed, called the For the People Act.  He argues that the bill politicizes voting just like the Republicans have been doing so in the states.  Also, he's not going to support ending the filibuster in the Senate.

So that's it, right?  Joe Biden is not only going to be a one-term President, he's going to be a half-term President once the Republicans take back Congress in 2022?

Time out, people.  Manchin never said he's against bills that protect voting rights.  He's just against this one.  I don't profess to be an expert on voting rights legislation, but I understand that the arguments against it are that it does little to end gerrymandering and even less to stop partisan officials from hijacking the vote count and throwing out results they don't like.  Rather, Manchin's hoping to gain support for the less comprehensive but still effective John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which would restore the 1965 Voting Rights Act and allow the federal government to oversee changes in state voting laws.  He and his fellow senator Lisa Murkowski, a Republican from Alaska, are working to get that passed.  (I'm not going any deeper into the intricacies of either bill, because that's above my pay grade.)

As for eliminating the filibuster, Manchin may be right about keeping it, because without the filibuster, a Republican majority could bass bad legislation in the Senate quite simply under a Republican President ready, willing and able to sign it.  And if the Republicans deny President Biden a comprehensive infrastructure bill or two-time him by agreeing to a deal on infrastructure and then stopping it, then and only then would Manchin be likely to enable it to pass through reconciliation.  But he'd still keep the filibuster.   

As for how President Biden's agenda moves forward, we'll see what happens.  But it looks like Manchin's fingerprints will be all over it.     

As for the President's negotiations with Senator Shelly Moore Capito (R-WV) on the infrastructure bill, well, I think he's negotiating with the wrong West Virginia senator.