While Steve Bannon was doing his best Hindenburg impression this afternoon, one piece of important news slid seemingly under the radar. For the past couple of weeks the Trump Administration has been taunting Democrats by hanging out the possibility that Trump would be naming conservative West Virginia Democratic Senator, Joe Manchin, to the post of Energy Secretary, replacing Rick Perry and leaving Manchin’s Senate seat open to be filled by West Virginia’s newly turncoated Republican Governor Jim Justice.
According to The Hill, and according to Manchin himself, that is not going to happen.
In a half-assed attempt to channel his wannabe Machiavellian impulses, Trump had placed Manchin on the short list of potential replacements for the hapless Perry, who would be kicked upstairs (so the thinking went) to Homeland Security, a place where he’d be less noticeably useless.
This scenario was calculated to garner Trump the coveted 53rd vote he needs to take away health insurance from 30 million Americans, by repealing the Affordable Care Act.
As Ed Kilgore from NYMag notes, the whole sordid enterprise, while appealing from a Republican standpoint, was fraught from the start with conflicting personalities and unrealistic expectations:
For this to transpire, of course, Rick Perry would have to agree to give up Energy for Homeland Security, and he quickly made noises that he was happy right where he was. Media folk pointed out that Perry and Trump had not exactly seen eye to eye on immigration enforcement in the past. And others fretted about the precision timing required to get Manchin confirmed and a reliable vote for “skinny repeal” sworn into the Senate.
In the end, it’s not clear if Perry balked, or Manchin passed, or Justice wanted to appoint himself to the hypothetical open seat, or if the whole thing was a Republican fantasy from the get-go. But this particular game of musical chairs ended before it began.
While many of us certainly have differences with Senator Manchin, we really don’t need to lose a Democratic Senate seat over those differences, particularly with the health care of millions hanging in the balance.
And we certainly don’t need to concede anything to Donald Trump.