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Biden’s even got a cute little nickname for Joe Manchin.

In case anyone was actually wondering if Biden actually cares that the senator is destroying his “agenda”.

Lauren Elizabeth
3 min readOct 31, 2021
Tom Williams/Roll Call

Virtually from the moment President Joe Biden took office and began attempting to implement what is theoretically his agenda, West Virginia senator Joe Manchin has gleefully served as an obstacle for every progressive value the left in the country might like to see happening. How can we forget that Manchin became the face of the broader obstructionist movement within the democratic party when he decided to go public with his insistence that the relief checks in Biden’s covid-19 rescue plan were scaled back and means tested? It certainly hasn’t ended there, and virtually with every passing day we have watched Manchin step in and succeed in getting virtually every progressive priority in the budget reconciliation bill cut out entirely or scaled back and means tested.

Now, how has Joe Biden been reacting to all of this? Wouldn’t one expect or at least hope that the president would be doing everything he can, using the basic model of carrots and sticks in an effort to get a rogue Senator on board with what is supposed to be legislation that will shape his legacy?

Well, as one might have already assumed given how events have unfolded, that is certainly not the case. In fact, Manchin has gone out of his way to assure reporters that the two are quite chummy. NBC news reports that the two of course not only talk regularly, as they should, but that Biden even has a cute little nickname for him: “Joe-Joe”.

“Joe-Joe”…

It’s all just one big club, and we’re not in it.

It’s always nice to know, isn’t it, that the President is so chummy with a multi-millionaire from West Virginia who essentially singlehandedly decided that the American people don’t deserve paid family leave? It’s nice to be assured that it’s really just Manchin and Sinema are the problem, and not the broader full scale corruption and big moneyed interest control within the democratic party that extends all the way up to the highest office in the land. It’s nice to be assured that the President is actually serious about getting these things done for the American people, while…

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Lauren Elizabeth
Lauren Elizabeth

Written by Lauren Elizabeth

Lauren is a writer & leftist with analysis on topics related to politics & policy. She can be reached at LaurenMartinchek@gmail.com or Twitter @xlauren_mx

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