In the classic Peanuts comic strip and animated cartoon, Lucy Van Pelt continues to offer the football for Charlie Brown to kick. He knows that every time he tries to kick it, though, Lucy will pull it away at the last minute, causing him to go careening into the air and land hard on his back and head. Every time. Even during an actual football game when they’re on the same team and they need that field goal to win, Lucy just can’t help it. She continually insists on holding the football for Charlie Brown, and then pull it away at the last minute so he ends up flat on his back in pain. It doesn’t matter if the team loses to her. It just matters that she pulls that football away before Chuck can kick it.
Holding that football and then snatching it from being kicked is power to her. She knows that she could hold it there and let him kick it if she wanted to. But she chooses not to. Because it is power. The power to cause pain and embarrassment and torment on someone she seemingly despises.
There’s been a lot of talk of late about U.S. Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia and his role as a spoiler to the Democrats in Washington. After years of being in the minority in the Senate, the Dems finally were able to squeak out the thinnest of majority control in 2021, thanks in no small part to flipping the two Senate seats in Georgia from some really nasty and abhorrent Trump acolytes. But, just when the Dems thought they were able to get things done in the Senate, up bubbles Senator Manchin like a fresh chunk of unflushed crap to serve as the new spoiler.
End the filibuster? Not on Machin’s watch. Even if it means not allowing a bipartisan commission on the January 6th insurrection. Raise the federal minimum wage? Forget it. Oh, you want those 50 votes to pass a bill through reconciliation? You need Manchin. And apparently he’s not happy about reconciliation either.
Now if you were to ask the backwater senator why he’s sabotaging needed reforms with his refusal to end the filibuster, he’d give some BS line about preserving the filibuster for when the Dems are back in the minority and that they’d need it to keep the Trump/Q Party in check. Oh, and something about wanting to reach bipartisan deals like in the “good old days”.
Sorry Senator, but you’re living in a geriatric delusion if you truly believe that. And this commentator suspects you don’t.
Keep the Trump/Q Party in check? Were you sleeping through the last four years? Pretty much everything that the Trump/Q Party’s narcissistic messiah wanted, the Senate made sure he got. Nothing was filibustered then. Rules were changed to prevent it, and then changed back again right before the power changed hands.
That’s what the so-called conservatives do. #cheat2win. That’s their modus operandi. Change the rules to favor your faction and only your faction, and then change them again so nobody else can use them.
And bipartisan agreements? Forget it. That’s also pretty much a pipe dream with the current party of lies, treason, fiction, fascism, violence, and insurrection that still call themselves “Republicans”. They ousted Senator Liz Cheney, daughter of a former Vice President, from her leadership position in the party because she refused to support the “Big Lie” of their narcissistic messiah. Does that sound like they’re a group willing to cooperate?
Let’s get brutally honest here... there is an ugly truth behind Senator Manchin’s role as spoiler, and it has nothing to do with “bipartisan cooperation” or “preserving a traditional check of power” or any other line of pure bullshit that Manchin could cobble up.
It.
Is.
About.
Power!
Before January 2021, the man with the power for the U.S. Senate was then-Majority Leader Mitch “The Bitch” McConnell. Nothing could get passed, enacted, or confirmed without his specific say-so. He kept one-third of the judicial system vacant, including a seat on the United States Supreme Court, simply because he wanted to be the one to fill those seats with his own toadies. And he did just that.
Then, after the Georgia runoff elections, the power shifted to Vice President Kamala Harris and current-Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. But that power is limited. McConnell still has veto power through the use and abuse of the filibuster, just like he did when he wasn’t in power briefly a decade ago. And whatever that can’t be filibustered still needs 50 votes plus Harris’s.
That is where Manchin comes in, along with his little toady, Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. The Dems need all fifty votes. Not forty-nine or forty-eight. Fifty. These two essentially hold their own party hostage for their own gains.
And, by the way, that’s also why they don’t want any more states in the union. Make the District of Columbia or even Puerto Rico a state, and even throw Guam in for good measure, and these two lose their veto power. It has nothing to do with “constitutional integrity” or any other boldface lie foisted by fraudulent so-called “constitutional scholars”. It has to do with power. Manchin’s and Sinema’s power.
To be fair, any of those fifty Dems can do the same thing as Manchin and Sinema if they wanted. Any one of them can thumb their party and Schumer and the Vice President in their collective eyes and demand whatever they want for their vote. I would suspect, though, that the rest of the Dems have pretty much nothing to gain in doing the backdoor bidding of the party of treason and violence and fascism and insurrection. Manchin and Sinema can claim they’re holding off the fascist traitors from voting them out, but that carries little weight outside of their own states.
The filibuster was never a part of the U.S. Constitution. It was a rule enacted in the Senate by the Senate for certain factions to hold power over the rest. Today it is being used specifically by one party – a party of fascist treasonous insurrectionists – for the sole purpose of getting their way. And for Manchin and Sinema to go along with that party for the sake of their own power makes them just as guilty.
Lucy Van Pelt is an evil, amoral sadistic child in the world of Peanuts who torments other kids like Charlie Brown simply because of the power she wields. I had long hoped that she would face some sort of consequence. Sadly, that never happened because her creator died twenty years ago. Her two real-world counterparts in the U.S. Senate need to have their footballs ripped out of their hands, or else be kicked in lieu of the ball.
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