It really isn't a new idea. It has been circulating around since at least last February when Annie Lowrey of Atlantic magazine urged Democrats to bribe Joe Manchin to support eliminating the filibuster by the earmarks pork bribe in order to "Give Joe Manchin Whatever He Wants." However, the urgency among Democrats and their media allies has gone into hyperdrive since Manchin again reiterated his strong support for maintaining the filibuster in a recent Op-Ed he wrote.
As a result some have dropped any hint of subtlety and are now flat out screeching for the bribery route in order to convince Manchin to change his mind on the filibuster. Among them the Daily Beast columnist Wahajat Ali who went into full bribe mode in his Sunday tweet.
Biden and Democrats should just bribe Manchin at this point with all the pork and praise and commissions he wants. Make a statue for him if he does the right thing. Appealing to democracy, decency, courage, and saving the country obviously didn't work.
— Wajahat Ali (@WajahatAli) June 6, 2021
The ironic thing here is that Ali probably made the chance of bribing Joe Manchin less likely since his tweet is basically an insult to the West Virginia senator since it stated that he wasn't open to an appeal based on "democracy, decency, courage, and saving the country." Just an appeal to bribery via pork earmarks might work on Manchin according to Ali who probably needs some salesmanship consultation.
This attitude of treating Manchin as someone unethical who could only be swayed by bribery was also reflected in Ali's June 3 Daily Beast column condemning Manchin as well as Kyrsten Sinema.
Biden just needs 50 votes in the Senate to kill the filibuster, but unfortunately we can’t have nice things thanks to Senators Joe Manchin, who is perpetually “deeply disappointed in the GOP and prepared to do nothing” yet still believes in a magical unicorn known as bipartisanship, and Kristen Sinema, whose sole talents so far appears to be her remarkable lack of accountability and tone-deaf responses to progressive causes, such as giving a thumbs-down vote and curtsy to a minimum wage increase while wearing a Lululemon bag. One way to move these two useless vessels of archaic moderation is to legally bribe them with lavish attention and pork that will help their states. Or Biden can play bad cop and join the progressive chorus in openly shaming them, which is what he flirted with at his recent speech where he called them out, not by name, as two members of his party whom he said vote more with the GOP than Democrats.
Exit question: Will Wahajat Ali soon be writing a book on "How NOT to Win Friends and Influence People?"
