 Well, it seems as if the For the People Act is dead. And the reason why I say that is because Joe Manchin, Senator from West Virginia, has decided that unilaterally he's killing it by choosing not to support it. Now if you're unaware as to why the For the People Act is so important, well across the country, Republicans and state legislatures have been introducing these draconian new crackdowns on voting rights. They want to explicitly suppress the rights of citizens, make voting more difficult so that way they can effectively rig future elections in their favor. Joe Manchin is saying, I am opposed to this. Now if you're unaware how prevalent voter suppression laws are, this tweet from Bernie Sanders puts it into perspective. These are all of the states where Republicans have introduced legislation to crack down on voting rights, 48 states. And the one piece of legislation that hasn't really been that controversial surprisingly within the Democratic Party is the For the People Act. It expands access to voting. It makes automatic voter registration a thing in all 50 states. It ends partisan gerrymandering. It's objectively a good thing if you care about democracy. Now there are some criticisms with the bill as it relates to third parties and not treating them as fair as the Democratic Party and Republican Party. But putting that aside overall, the net positive of this bill is undeniable. And Joe Manchin unilaterally is choosing to kill it. And the reasoning he gives as to why he's not supporting it is just absolutely insane. Even Kirsten Sinema supports the For the People Act. That goes to show you how unreasonable Joe Manchin is being by not supporting it. Now as Jake Johnson of Common Dreams explains, Democratic Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia penned an op-ed Sunday vowing to oppose the For the People Act when it hits the Senate floor later this month. And reiterating his objections to eliminating the filibuster, effectively guaranteeing that the ambitious voting rights bill will fail to pass. Published in West Virginia's Charleston Gazette Mail, Manchin's op-ed comms as Republicans are pushing hundreds of voter suppression measures at the state level across the nation. Attacks on the franchise that could be neutralized by passage of the For the People Act. According to the latest tally by the Brennan Center for Justice, at least 14 states this year have enacted 22 new laws that restrict access to the vote. Given the enormous implications of the ongoing voting rights battle, Manchin's article drew a furious response from fellow members of Congress and progressive activists. Manchin's op-ed might as well be titled, while all vote to preserve Jim Crow tweeted Representative Mondair Jones. We didn't need an op-ed to know you're unwilling to protect our democracy, Representative Mark Pocan added. The only Democratic Senator who has refused to co-sponsor the For the People Act, Manchin wrote Sunday that he will vote against the bill this month because it has advanced through Congress without Republican support. Yeah, so he's not supporting it because Republicans aren't supporting it and it's partisan and bipartisanship is everything according to him. So since no Republicans are supporting it, he can't support it because it's too divisive. Now he explains his reasoning or lack thereof in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News and he also just hilariously tries to pretend as if he cares about democracy while opposing the one bill that fixes a lot of the issues with our democracy. Take a look and see what he has to say. You know, voting is a bedrock of our democracy. An open, fair, secured voting. We used to go around the world and explain and show and observe voting procedures in a democracy. And now if we can't practice what we preach and we're going to basically do an overhaul, an 800 page overhaul of the voting rights or what we call for the People Act, I think there's a lot of great things. I agree in that piece of legislation, but there's an awful lot of things that basically don't pertain directly to voting. So the voting rights out or now we just, sure. I just, so just to put a button on this, you will vote against that bill if it gets to the Senate floor. I think it's the wrong piece of legislation to bring our country together and unite our country and I'm not supporting that because I think it would divide us further. I don't want to be in a country's divide any further than I'm in right now. I love my country. And I think my Democrat and Republican colleagues feel the same. If we continue to divide it and separate us more, it's not going to be united. It's not going to be the country that we love and know. And it's going to be hard because it will be back and forth no matter who's in power. And that's why I've been protecting the process. So because it's supported along party lines, it's too partisan and therefore it's too divisive. The effort to rig future elections systematically that's occurring in 48 states, as that Bernie Sanders Tui pointed out, that isn't necessarily divisive. What's divisive is the effort to fix democracy, rein in dark money and politics. Stop partisan gerrymandering. That is what's divisive to Joe Manchin. He's just the clown. And again, you can tell how unreasonable he's being because he's the only individual in the Senate who caucuses with the Democratic Party who's against this. Independence, Bernie Sanders and Angus King support this. Kirsten Sinema even supports it. Even the most right wing Democrats, John Tester, he supports it. It's only Joe Manchin who's choosing to side with his right wing buddies who's against this. Now I could say a lot about this, but I think that Jamal Bowman in an interview with John Berman on CNN put best. Joe Manchin has become the new Mitch McConnell. During Obama's presidency said he would do everything in his power to stop Obama. He's also repeated that now during the Biden presidency by saying he would do everything in his power to stop President Biden. And now Joe Manchin is doing everything in his power to stop democracy and to stop our work for the people, the work that the people sent us here to do. H.R.1 not only is a huge bill when it comes to voting rights, it's a huge bill in terms of getting big money out of politics, protecting our elections against fraud and ending gerrymandering. I mean, big money in politics is what's destroying our democracy. And the Republican Party is aiding and abetting that. And Donald Trump is obviously doing that as well. So Manchin is not pushing us closer to bipartisanship. He is doing the work of the Republican Party by being an obstructionist, just like they've been since the beginning of Biden's presidency. That's exactly right. He's the one who's being a partisan actor, but he's doing it in the name of bipartisanship so less people notice. They think that he's not being a partisan actor, but really he is a partisan actor because he's representing the interests of the party that he cares about the most, the Republican Party. I mean, his state of West Virginia, it went to Donald Trump. He contemplated voting for Donald Trump back in 2020 in the event Bernie Sanders was the Democratic Party's nominee. So this individual is more of a Republican than a Democrat. And so, you know, it doesn't really matter what excuse he wants to come up with. In actuality, what really this is about is him being a coward and unwilling to stand up to his corporate donors because even the most corporate Democrats support the For the People Acts. But the thing that he probably doesn't like is the provision that would force super PACs that disclose their contributors, which to him is a bad thing because they want to be able to donate unanimously to both parties and they don't really want to out themselves. So I mean, this guy is a corporate stooge and part of it is he just he loves the spotlight. Like it's not just corruption. Understand that this individual absolutely loves all the attention that he's getting. He loves being the lowest common denominator and he loves that every single piece of legislation has to be approved by him in order for it to get passed. Basically, this individual, this senator from West Virginia is the president of the United States. Joe Biden isn't doing much to reign him in. I mean, he made this like tepid condemnation of him kind of without naming him the other day. But if this is going to keep happening unless Joe Biden puts his foot down. Now, Joe Biden can complain all he wants publicly privately. But the thing is that I think that Joe Biden actually likes what Joe Manchin is doing because it gives Joe Biden plausible deniability. He doesn't like the fixes that his party wants to implement and he's kind of being forced to at least pay lip service to some of the more progressive things. He's not standing up to people like Joe Manchin. He's not using his bully pulpit to condemn individuals like Joe Manchin because I don't think he wants to. I think that he likes that Joe Manchin is doing this. He's taking all the heat for Joe Biden. So Joe Biden doesn't necessarily have to look like the villain in saying, I don't actually support all of these things that I ran on. I mean, either way, whatever is happening, it's disgusting and the pressure needs to be on folks like this from the grassroots. It's unacceptable and his constituents should absolutely be calling him and asking why he's siding more with the authoritarian party than the weak Democratic party who at least wants some fixes to our democracy.