Joe Manchin Tripping Up Biden’s Judicial Nominees On His Way Out Of Senate

A doofus until the end.

Departing Democratic Senator Joe Manchin has voted against several of President Joe Biden’s judicial nominees this week. It’s not as if they said anything mean about coal, but Manchin told Politico that he won’t vote for any judicial pick who doesn’t have minimal Republican support. Unfortunately, he’s not counting himself, which seems unfair.

“Just one Republican. That’s all I’m asking for,” Manchin said. “Give me something bipartisan. This is my own little filibuster. If they can’t get one Republican, I vote for none. I’ve told [Democrats] that. I said, ‘I’m sick and tired of it, I can’t take it anymore.’”

Manchin perfectly demonstrates the idiocy of performative centrism. He can’t articulate any issue he has with these recent judicial nominees other than that his Republican besties don’t like them. He’s thus surrendering his own vote to the GOP. If Biden’s nominee doesn’t have bipartisan support, then Manchin will damn well ensure they have bipartisan opposition. He’s a very tedious person.

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Republicans don’t always collectively reject Biden’s nominees. Some receive a fraction of GOP votes if they happen to come from “red” states whose Republican senators have approved them beforehand. And every so often, Susan Collins, Lisa Murkowski, and even Lindsey Graham will cross party lines and support a perfectly qualified nominee as if it’s their constitutional duty or something.

“If they don’t have a Republican, I’m opposing,” Manchin went on. “That’s my way of saying: 'I’m leaving this place, I’ve tried everything I can. Don’t tell me you can’t get one.’ If you’ve got a decent person you can at least get one. Just go ask Lisa, go ask Susan, even Lindsey. Lisa and Susan both are not controlled by just voting party line, I know that. But you’ve got to ask them.”

Currently, the Senate Democratic caucus has 51 members, including Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema from the Sinema Party. If Manchin pouts and withholds his vote, that would create a tie (barring no Republican absences), and the Kamala Harris Symbol would summon the vice president to the Capitol.

Manchin’s stunt hasn’t jeopardized any nominations so far, but the outlook seems bleak for Adeel Abdullah Mangi, a Pakistani-American lawyer Biden nominated to serve as a judge on the Philadelphia-based 3rd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals. He would’ve been the nation’s first Muslim federal appeals court judge, so it’s not a shock that Republicans unanimously oppose his confirmation. Unfortunately, Democratic Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto has also folded against what Jennifer Bendery at HuffPost describes as a “nasty and baseless smear campaign.”

“I cannot support this nominee,” Cortez Masto said in a statement released Tuesday. “Mr. Mangi’s affiliation with the Alliance of Families for Justice is deeply concerning.”

Cortez Masto disappoints

The Alliance of Families for Justice is a non-profit organization that provides counseling services and legal aid to the families of incarcerated people. It’s not Al-Qaeda.

“What we know is that families who have incarcerated loved ones are suffering in silence,” explained Soffiyah Elijah, the AFJ’s founder. “They don’t tell anybody. They don’t tell co-workers, they don’t tell neighbors, they don’t tell fellow parishioners, they just don’t tell anyone that they have an incarcerated loved one.”

Cortez Masto said, “This organization has sponsored a fellowship in the name of Kathy Boudin, a member of the domestic terrorist organization Weather Underground, and advocated for the release of individuals convicted of killing police officers.”

Kathy Boudin served 23 years in prison for felony murder. She expressed remorse for her crimes, and after her release in 2003, she worked in an HIV/AIDS clinic and was hired as an adjunct professor at Columbia University in 2008. The AFJ’s fellowship doesn’t celebrate Boudin’s criminal past but instead recognizes how she turned her life around. Advocating for people who’ve been convicted of violent crimes is not the same as actively supporting violent criminals. Cortez Masto is a lawyer and Nevada’s former attorney general. It’s “deeply concerning” that she doesn’t understand the difference or apparently believe in redemption.

Actor Danny Glover is a founding board member of the AFJ. He’s also not a terrorist.

The American Bar Association unanimously rated Mangi as well-qualified — not that ABA’s opinion matters much to Republicans who eagerly confirmed Donald Trump’s far-right hacks. Ten of Trump’s nominees were rated “unqualified.” This includes Florida Judge Kathryn Kimball Mizelle, who struck down the federal mask mandate on airplanes and public transportation. Mangi’s received high praise for his legal expertise, but Republicans still went after him with McCarthy-like zeal. During Mangi’s confirmation hearing, Ted Cruz, Tom Cotton, and Josh Hawley demanded Mangi share his personal views about 9/11, the October 7 terrorist attack in Israel, and how dreamy he considered Hamas on a scale of one to 10 (the last one was exaggerated but not by much).

The right-wing Judicial Crisis Network ran ads smearing Mangi as a radical anti-Semite and linking him to 9/11. It’s horrific to see the Right twist the serious charge of anti-semitism into today’s “communist” slur.

Fifteen Jewish groups, including National Council of Jewish Women, Bend the Arc: Jewish Action, Carolina Jews for Justice, and The Shalom Center, pledged their support for Mangi in a letter to the Senate. It read in part:

“It is clear to us that Adeel A. Mangi is a person of strength and good deeds, as evidenced by his career, devotion to his community, and commitment to religious freedom and civil rights.”

Republicans unleashing gross bigotry on a political opponent is about what you’d expect from those ghouls. It is disappointing that Cortez Masto would help do the GOP’s dirty work, latching onto a seemingly non-Islamophobic reason for keeping him off the bench. Worse, Manchin delivers the killing blow with his personal filibuster. The Senate blocking Mangi is no less wrong because it’s now “bipartisan.”

The overall state of Biden’s judicial nominations

Nicole Berner, an American-Israeli labor attorney who’s also gay, was confirmed Tuesday to the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 4th Circuit. She’s Biden 186th successful judicial nominee. That is about 80 percent of Trump’s four-year total. There are many reasons why Biden’s output has lagged Trump’s, and most are Dick Durbin, the Judiciary Committee chair who still entertains outdated Senate courtesies like the “blue slip,” which gives senators a veto over nominees from their state. The practice was mostly ignored when Republicans controlled the Senate and they stacked the courts with regimental efficiency.

Republicans are favored to regain the majority this year, even if Biden wins re-election. If that happens, we can expect his judicial confirmations to slow down considerably. The hearings will probably get even uglier with Lindsey Graham presiding over them.

This is obviously the worst time for Manchin’s tantrum, but it seems as if he wants to flex his decreasing muscle during his final months in the Senate. According to Politico, Manchin is still fighting valiantly for the legislative filibuster, whose continued existence is his primary legacy. I assume he thinks that’s a good thing. He’s told donors to ask candidates “if they will commit to supporting and keeping the filibuster. If they don’t, you ought to think twice about it.”

I look forward to not thinking twice about Joe Manchin.

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