Joe Manchin’s friends aren’t listening to him

Manchin has been saying the same thing for months. The October statement was a response to a House Progressive push for a front-loaded scheme. I also wrote about this, just a few hours before Manchin’s statement.

All in all, the stakes of this policy fight were pretty clear and pretty concrete at the time. Democratic leadership simply chose to ignore Manchin and go with the House Progressive approach. The November bill depicted in the chart above does the exact opposite of Manchin’s October prescriptions. If Democrats want Manchin’s vote, they will need to rethink that.