Biden described the situation on an after-action conference call with gun control allies Thursday. (Press were not invited; a participant provided access to BuzzFeed.) Recalling the final push to get moderates off the fence on gun control, Biden said he found some Republicans making a choice: They could either cross their activist base on immigration or guns, but not both.
A political calculation was made, and the Senators decided immigration was the safer bet.
“They said, ‘Look, you can’t ask me to carry too much water here. You want me to do the right thing on immigration; I either can do that, or guns. I can’t do both of these things,'” Biden said. “‘On immigration, at least what will happen if I don’t the right way with immigration it’s going to cost me in my state. But if I don’t vote the right way with guns’ — they didn’t say ‘right way’ — ‘if I don’t vote on guns the way [you] want, they’re not going to punish me.'”
Manchin, a conservative Democrat who has laid most of the blame on the failure of his bill on a disinformation campaign by the NRA, echoed what Biden heard on the phone with Senators.
“They’ll evaluate it and say, ‘I can take on one fight, but do I need to take on two or three?'” he said of his fellow swing voting Senators. “How much energy do I have to sell two things?”
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