What did Joe Manchin want? The answer was slippery. He clearly didn’t like the size of the Build Back Better proposal, which now totaled $3.5 trillion. There was evidence of rising inflation, and Manchin didn’t want a fresh injection of government spending compounding the problem. But was he bargaining in good faith to create a bill that allayed his substantive concerns? Or was he preparing to grind Biden down with an endless negotiation on behalf of his friends in the fossil fuel industry back in West Virginia?
The thing about Manchin is that he is like a Faulkner novel, a stream of consciousness monologue that could be painfully difficult to read, since the point of view kept shifting. But there was one consistent sentiment that he mouthed in nearly every meeting and that reassured Ron Klain. Even as he expressed his doubts, he kept telling Biden, “Don’t worry, Mr. President, we’re going to get this done.” So instead of constantly reinterpreting Manchin, the White House assumed that most of his outbursts were just noise, which could be largely ignored.
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