Joe Manchin

West Virginia governor Jim Justice announced that he is running for US Senate on stage at the Greenbrier, the swanky hotel owned by his family, yesterday. “I absolutely will promise you to God above that I will do the job, and I will do the job that will make you proud,” said the larger-than-life Justice, with his pet bulldog (and political mascot) Babydog sitting in a red armchair next to him.  The announcement sets up the possibility of an epic showdown between Justice (a former Democrat, now a Republican) and his friend Joe Manchin. The race could be decisive when it comes to control of the Senate after 2024. Manchin is one of three Democratic senators up for reelection who represent states won by Donald Trump in 2020.

When asked whether he will leave the Democratic Party and become an independent at a press conference on Monday, West Virginia senator Joe Manchin said, "I'm not a Washington Democrat, I don't know what to tell you… I have no intention of doing anything right now. Whether I do something later, I can't tell you what the future's going to bring." Simultaneously, Manchin threw a punch at former Senate challenger and current congressman Alex Mooney, stating, "[Governor Jim] Justice is a much better candidate, and he would be doing it for the right reasons. I think Mooney is doing it strictly for his political ambition." While Manchin hasn't yet confirmed a re-election bid, his comments leave the door open for his departure from the Democratic Party.

“We are Reagan,” a Biden “confidant” tells Axios. After how many hallucinogens, the story doesn’t say. Pretty many would be a fair guess. The story wherein occurred the remarkable comparison never rose more than a foot or so from the ground, likely due to its fantastic nature. Nor was the “confidant” ever identified, possibly to spare his or her children's playground embarrassment. Any comparison of Joseph Robinette Biden and Ronald Wilson Reagan, if it ventures beyond their service in the White House, is about as nutty as comparisons ever get. It might repay us to ask the basis of such a claim, however fruitless.

Since the latest growth numbers have come out, much ink has been spilled over the question of whether the economy is in a recession. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the Biden administration tried to get out ahead of Thursday’s release with a press statement noting that back-to-back quarters of negative growth doesn't necessarily mean a recession. Also predictably, Republicans strongly rebuked the idea, saying, “You can’t change reality by arguing over definitions.” Both sides of the debate will continue to play out, and both sides will continue to miss the point. Ultimately, it doesn’t matter very much whether growth goes up or down by 0.2 percent. What matters is the general trajectory of the economy. And on that front, the Biden track record is mixed at best.

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer knows how to fix inflation: higher taxes. “If you want to get rid of inflation, the only way to do it is to undo a lot of the Trump tax cuts and raise rates,” surmised the New York Democrat to reporters on Tuesday, after meeting with West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin about the budget. “No Republican is ever going to do that. So the only way to get rid of inflation is through reconciliation.” Manchin saw it slightly differently, portraying tax increases as budget reduction tools. He believes debt reduction is “the only way” to fight an inflation problem that threatens to wash away Democratic majorities in Congress.

Five Guys has always been Cockburn’s first choice for a greasy cheeseburger — breakfast of champions, says he — but Good Stuff Eatery, a Capitol Hill joint, is a solid second. So it is that Cockburn finds himself with a new respect for Congressman Ro Khanna, Democrat of California, who was recently interviewed by Politico while eating at Good Stuff. Yet for sheer artery-clogging goodness, you can’t beat the story Khanna told about President Joe Biden. Per Politico, Khanna said he was once chatting with the president about the difficulties facing the Democratic senatorial caucus (as one does). “Mr. President,” he said, “why don’t you just get Bernie Sanders and Joe Manchin in the room and hammer this out?

By the middle of January, I’d read some version of the headline “Biden Can Still Rescue His Presidency” so many times that it seemed an algorithm had taken over from the editors. The New York Times placed it above a column by Bret Stephens, a prominent anti-Trump conservative and a member of the pundit pack that earnestly wished the president Godspeed when he entered the White House more than a year ago. Stephens, like most of his colleagues, argued that Biden was “flailing — and failing” — because of what the paper’s news pages have described as a “legislative agenda in shambles.

"For too long, we’ve failed to use the most important word when it comes to meeting the climate crisis,” President Biden declared in his presidential address to Congress in April 2020. “Jobs. Jobs. Jobs.” Investments in jobs and infrastructure, the president pleaded, have often had bipartisan support in the past. In November, he got nineteen Republican senators to vote for his $1 trillion infrastructure bill, but the main planks of Biden’s climate plan were in the $2.2 trillion Build Back Better Act. The House passed it in November, only for it to fail in the Senate, thanks to opposition from the most powerful man in Washington, at least when it comes to passing legislation.

How long will the Democrats weep for the death of their transformational agenda this week? It's anyone’s guess. Everyone handles grief differently. Senator Chuck Schumer’s decision to hold a vote on a filibuster carveout seems like less of a Hail Mary effort and more like an attempt to virtue-signal toward the progressives in his party. If someday he is forced to go toe-to-toe in a Senate primary with Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, at least he can tell the pitch-fork waving socialists that he tried to change the filibuster. That should save him, right Chuck? Despite President Biden’s opinion, that he “probably outperformed what anybody thought would happen”, the general consensus after his first year is that things aren’t going great.

The first workday of 2022 and already Washington, DC has been paralyzed by snow. That isn't saying much, given that half an inch is enough to shut things down around these parts. As a kid growing up in Connecticut, I remember countless snowy mornings when I'd wake up early, pad downstairs, turn on the listings, only to be devastated to learn that school was only delayed by half an hour. Cut to DC, where they'll close the schools because it's cold outside. So it goes in our thin-blooded nation's capital. And in fairness, the fact that many federal employees are still working from home has mitigated the paralysis somewhat. Still, a city needs to move in order to work, and it's there that the literal gets at something figurative.

Joe Manchin was never going to vote for Build Back Better. Now that he's declared himself a "no" and all but killed President Biden's titanic spending package, it's time for Democrats to admit as much. To be sure, Manchin has played well the role of centrist negotiator. He's furrowed his brow and raised pragmatic concerns over renewable energy and inflation. He's huddled with his fellow Joe at the White House and won plenty of concessions. He's provided chum for bored (and boring) political analysts, as analyzing him and his fellow holdout Kyrsten Sinema became a kind of Kremlinology for the Twitter-addicted. But such breathless parsing forgets one simple fact: all politics is local.

Just in time for the holidays, lawmakers will soon approve another increase to the country’s debt limit, perhaps by as much as $2.5 trillion. And like so many of us this time of year, Uncle Sam will continue running up his credit card, spending money on things he can’t afford and often doesn’t really need. That said, there’s little doubt that the coming debt ceiling hike is a necessary (if self-serving) gift from our nation’s capital. After all, legislators from both parties have already authorized trillions in spending, knowing full well the country’s dismal fiscal situation.

Few things are inevitable in Congress, but passing massive spending during a time of record deficits is probably one of them. Late Friday night, the House agreed to changes made by their Senate colleagues, sending a $1.2 trillion infrastructure package to President Joe Biden’s desk after months of debate. Despite much palace intrigue and handwringing, our leaders managed to do what they do best: authorize spending a lot more of our money. The vote was mostly along party lines, with a baker’s dozen Republicans crossing the aisle in support of the package — much to the chagrin of their conservative colleagues. With contentious midterms closing in, some Republicans wanted to tout their adeptness at bringing home the bacon to more moderate districts.