The verbal scuffle between Senators Joe Manchin and Bernie Sanders over the pace and scope of Biden's social spending plan is going increasingly public. It's also being tracked by the White House.
It was almost inevitable that the fight over President Joe Biden’s agenda would come down to Bernie Sanders vs. Joe Manchin.
“They’ve never been particularly close, and they have very different approaches,” said Sen. Martin Heinrich . He argued Democrats have a solution: “It’s called Joe Biden.” After Sanders placed an op-ed in the Charleston Gazette-Mail that earned a sharp rebuke from Manchin on Friday, the West Virginian shrugged off the attempted intra-party squeeze when asked in person. Sanders hitting him back home "doesn’t make things harder for me. It is what it is,” Manchin said. Sanders declined to comment about the op-ed as he raced to a Monday night meeting with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer’s leadership team, which includes Manchin.
Some Democrats said that Sanders had erred by going after his colleague in his home state. Manchin has long said senators shouldn’t campaign against each other, and the op-ed from Sanders was “a mistake,” according to one Democratic senator, who requested anonymity to speak candidly: “It didn’t accomplish anything. We’re in a position to get this thing done. Everybody has to act like an adult.”
But their personas diverge from there: The back-slapping Manchin is a former quarterback who opposes abortion rights, works to protect his state’s coal industry and is probably the only Democrat who can win statewide office in his West Virginia these days. The New York-bred Sanders is often brusque and resolute in his view that social liberalism, including a strong safety net, can benefit the poor and working-class — especially in West Virginia.
Murphy, like most in the party, is willing to meet Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema at a lower spending number. But rank-and-file Democrats are still waiting for a breakthrough.
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