Democratic Nemesis Joe Manchin Suddenly Calls for Reforms He Previously Didn't Support
Turn-around could give Dems much-needed accomplishments
No senator except that other Democratic gadfly, Sen Kirsten Sinema of Arizona, has disappointed fellow Democrats more over the last year or so than West Virginia's Joe Manchin.
Not only has he — time and again — thumbed his nose at almost every initiative to come before the Senate from President Biden and other Democrats, Manchin refuses even to budge on even the mildest of reforms to the filibuster with which Republicans use to reflexively obstruct these same initiatives.
So it came like a bolt from the blue Tuesday when the same Joe Manchin declared the need for several reforms which previously had caused him to balk.
“By allowing Medicare to negotiate drug prices, capping the cost of insulin at $35 per month, and allowing the importation of drugs from Canada, we can lower prescription drug prices in America. We must take action & keep the promises we've made to our seniors,” the senator tweeted.
These same initiatives were contained in the sweeping Build Back Better Act which Manchin doggedly helped kill last year.
Which is undoubtedly why CNN White House correspondent John Harwood retweeted Manchin's announcement with the comment, “(possibly) significant.”
The West Virginian's apparent change of heart could create an underpinning for legislation that, if it were to pass, could give Democrats a much-needed major accomplishment right ahead of November's midterm elections which could prove perilous for them.
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