Dahleen Glanton: Sen. Joe Manchin and the ghosts of Dixiecrats past

Sen. Joe Manchin has a unique opportunity to go down in history as the man who saved our democracy. Obviously, he isn’t interested in rescuing America from the grips of those who are trying to destroy it.

Republicans are doing all in their power to rip up the foundation this nation was built upon. In GOP-led states across the country, Republicans are working hard to block Americans who would not vote for them from ever casting another ballot.

It is the most un-American movement we have seen in more than a half-century. One man has the power to stop it with a single vote, but he refuses to take a stand.

At this crucial moment, Manchin has chosen to be a Sen. Strom Thurmond rather than an Everett M. Dirksen, the Illinois Republican senator who brought both sides together to end the filibuster against the 1964 civil rights bill. If Manchin had been around in the 1940s, he likely would have been a card-carrying Dixiecrat like Thurmond.

Manchin isn’t a coward, as some have suggested. He’s a Republican masquerading as a Democrat. By caucusing with them, he has given Democrats control of the Senate, but his sole purpose is to render them powerless.

He could have easily switched parties, which would have allowed the GOP to retain leadership. But he stayed with the Democrats, knowing that he could cause more harm to their agenda by pretending to be one of them.

Had he simply moved over to the party that has his heart, it is likely that no one in his deep red, Donald Trump-loving state of West Virginia would have objected. But as a Democrat, he holds more power than he ever could as a Republican.

Allowing a single man to have the final say regarding the country’s destiny is a serious flaw in our democracy. If Manchin supported the values of the majority of American voters, perhaps it would be less egregious. But he’s steering the country in the same path as Republicans who are trying to drive it to ruins, though they lost the election.

If there were any hope left that he would do the right thing, Manchin made it clear Sunday that he’s not the guy. He will not protect voting rights or help President Joe Biden push through other big-ticket items on his agenda.

In an op-ed published in The Charleston Gazette-Mail newspaper in his home state, he let it be known that he is looking out for Republicans. If Democrats can’t get a single Republican on board, don’t look at him for help.

Manchin said he has no intention of voting with every other Democrat in favor of the For the People Act, the party’s only weapon against voter suppression bills making their way through state legislatures. He also said he would never vote to end the filibuster, thus giving Republicans the power to stop bills from coming to a vote.

He’s trying to convince us that his position is noble, that he is working for democracy rather than against it. Yet he has done nothing to try to bring the two sides closer. All he’s good for is providing more opposition.

Manchin’s reason for holding Democrats at bay in a 50-50 Senate, where Vice President Kamala Harris gets to cast the deciding vote, is insulting to people of color who are the targets of this ruthless GOP vendetta.

He represents a state that is 92% white, so the voting rights of Black and brown Americans aren’t a big concern of his. He and Thurmond, the former South Carolina Democrat who turned Republican, have that in common too.

Thurmond, a staunch segregationist who died in 2003, was the last survivor of the States’ Rights Democratic Party, or Dixiecrats, which broke away from the official Democratic Party in 1948 over President Harry Truman’s support for civil rights.

The primary goal of the Dixiecrats was to maintain the Jim Crow status in the South. Voting rights for African Americans was the biggest threat to their way of life.

The party was short-lived, but the Dixiecratic philosophy survived. Most of these segregationists migrated to the Republican Party after President Lyndon B. Johnson shepherded through the Civil Rights Act of 1964 and the Voting Rights Act of 1965.

Though the Dixiecrats are long gone, they left behind a playbook that Republicans have used off and on for decades. Now, it’s the GOP Bible.

Thurmond’s most notable accomplishment during nearly a half-century in the Senate was his record-breaking one-person filibuster in 1957 to defeat the civil rights bill. His Senate speech went on for 24 hours and still holds the record.

By refusing to help Democrats end the filibuster, Manchin is offering any Republican with the stamina the chance to break that record. But Republicans don’t have to talk all night to get their way. All they must do is refuse to end the debate, which requires 60 votes.

Manchin is setting civil rights back 50 years by opposing the voting rights bill. And like Thurmond, he knows exactly what he’s doing.

In arguing against a federal voting rights law, Thurmond insisted that no one has been denied the vote, though Jim Crow was in full effect. Manchin wrote that protecting voting rights for people of color is too political for him to get involved.

“The right to vote is fundamental to our American democracy,” Manchin wrote. He should have added that it only applies to those who vote Republican.

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