In his essay, Mr. Manchin aimed most of his darts at fellow Democrats, branding the For the People Act as a partisan power grab. This is the main argument against the legislation used by Republicans to give cover to the state-level bills, including Senator Mitch McConnell, who has said S. 1 is “designed to advantage one side and disadvantage the other.”
Mr. Manchin wrote, “Today’s debate about how to best protect our right to vote and to hold elections, however, is not about finding common ground, but seeking partisan advantage.”
He went on to explain himself more fully: “I have always said, ‘If I can’t go home and explain it, I can’t vote for it.’ And I cannot explain strictly partisan election reform or blowing up the Senate rules to expedite one party’s agenda.”
Representative Jamaal Bowman, a liberal Democrat from New York, accused Mr. Manchin of doing Mr. McConnell’s job for him. “Joe Manchin has become the new Mitch McConnell,” Mr. Bowman said during an appearance on CNN.
“Mitch McConnell, during Obama’s presidency, said he would do everything in his power to stop Obama — he’s also repeated that now during the Biden presidency,” he added. “Now Joe Manchin is doing everything in his power to stop democracy and to stop our work for the people, the work that the people sent us here to do.”
Mr. Manchin has said that while he’s opposed to S. 1, he would support a version of the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which seeks to restore provisions of the 1965 Voting Rights Act invalidated by the Supreme Court in 2013, but it would do little to turn back the laws already passed by Republican legislatures.
Infrastructure and climate
Voting rights is far from the only issue on which Mr. Manchin has said he wants bipartisan agreement. He’s also brandished the demand for bipartisanship against Mr. Biden’s major domestic-policy priority: investment in infrastructure.