The first sentence of Joe Manchin's (D?-WV) op-ed for The Charleston Gazette-Mail starts off on a promising note: "The right to vote is fundamental to our American democracy and protecting that right should not be about party or politics." But the second sentence is a bring-down: "Least of all, protecting this right, which is a value I share, should never be done in a partisan manner."
Near the end of the op-ed he writes, "I believe that partisan voting legislation will destroy the already weakening binds of our democracy, and for that reason, I will vote against the For the People Act. Furthermore, I will not vote to weaken or eliminate the filibuster."
Why does Manchin think that the GOP — which supported Trump's incitement to riot on January 6, which thinks the election was fraudulent, which tolerates toxic QAnon ideas in its ranks, which claims the Capitol insurrectionists were false-flag antifa members, and which is helping GOP state legislatures around the country enact voter suppression bills — would ever support any kind of federal law that helps people exercise their right to vote? His refusal to support the For the People Act and to weaken the filibuster could be the horseshoe nail that leads the United States to become a fascist dictatorship.
By Manchin's reasoning, if he'd been in Congress in the 1860s, he would have voted against the Thirteenth Amendment to abolish slavery against the Fourteenth Amendment to guarantee equal protection.
