Politics

‘I Am Not A Roadblock’: Joe Manchin Says He Just Wants The System To Work As It Should

Virginia Kruta Associate Editor
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Democratic West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin said Sunday that it’s not his intention to be a “roadblock,” but that he wants the system to work as it was designed to work.

Manchin joined CNN’s Dana Bash on “State of the Union,” and he said that he just wanted to preserve the “brilliant strategy” inherent in the system that the founding fathers had designed. (RELATED: ‘You’ll Get There’: Joe Manchin Says He’s Forgotten Names Too, Says Biden ‘Hasn’t Missed A Step’)

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Bash began by saying that she had spoken to a number of Democrats who view Manchin as an obstacle in the way of a very ambitious agenda — an agenda that’s ambitious in part because they understand that, historically, the president’s party was destined to lose seats in the midterm elections.

“So they believe that you’re one of the main roadblocks on getting those goals accomplished. How do you respond to that?” Bash asked.

“I’m not a roadblock at all,” Manchin pushed back, saying that the best way to keep a majority is to govern well. “The best politics is good government. I can’t believe that people believe that if you just do it my way, that will give us the momentum to get through the next election.”

“We won’t give this system a chance to work,” Manchin continued. “I am not going to be part of blowing up this Senate of ours or basically this democracy of ours or the republic that we have … The House was designed to be hot as a fire cracker, we were designed to cool off, and that’s the founding fathers. It was a brilliant, brilliant strategy they looked at, so why can’t we try to make this work?”

“If you have the violent swings every time you have a party change, then we will have no consistency whatsoever,” Manchin concluded.