Dem
47
GOP
53
The 118th Congress has about 7 weeks left, which is time to take care of some business. In particular, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) plans on calling a lame-duck session of the Senate specifically for confirming as many judges as possible. Donald Trump got 234 conservative judges confirmed in his first term. So far, Joe Biden has gotten 213 judges confirmed, but 32 more are in the pipeline. Schumer wants to confirm as many of these as he can in December. Republicans will oppose every one, no matter how many law degrees the candidates have from wherever.
Some of Biden's nominees do not have unanimous backing of all Democrats, which could cause a problem. On his way out the door, Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) has said he will not vote to confirm any judge unless there is at least one Republican vote for the candidate (though he's also backtracked on that some). Under the current circumstance, the total number of Republican votes for all the candidates combined will be exactly zero. Manchin's vote is not essential if Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (I-AZ) votes for the candidates, also not a given.
We still don't understand what that dude was doing. Manchin has been a thorn in the Democrats' side for years. If he was planning to run again, it made some sense to stick it to Biden a lot. That would have played well back home. But he wasn't planning to run again. He's a normal politician. He knows how the game is played. He knew that when the Infrastructure bill came up for a vote, he could have said: "I will vote for it if you will provide the funds to build a new state-of-the-art high school in every town in West Virginia, to be called the Joe Manchin High School." Then, when the CHIPS Act came up for discussion, he could have said: "I will vote for it if you will provide the funds to build a new seniors' center in every town in West Virginia, to be called the Joe Manchin Seniors' Center. Then when the CHIPS Act actually came to a vote, he could have said: "I will vote for it if you provide the funds to build a new sports complex in every town in West Virginia, to be called the Joe Manchin Sports Complex." Then when the Inflation Reduction Act actually came up for a vote, he could have said: "I will vote for it if you will provide the funds to build the biggest solar panel factory in the world in West Virginia, to be called the Joe Manchin Solar Panel Factory." But he didn't. He could have gotten it all, and more. What was he up to? It makes no sense. He could have brought his state into the 21st century and been celebrated as the most important person in the history of West Virginia for decades to come. And he didn't do it.
Sinema is an even bigger mystery. She used to be in the Green Party and suddenly she found her inner Republican and liked nothing. At the start of Joe Biden's term, she was 44. She could have acted like a moderate Democrat, gotten more pork than Manchin (because her state is bigger) and served in the Senate for the next 40 years, eventually chairing some major committee. But she threw it all away, apparently for nothing. In some ways, she will be missed. She was the most flamboyantly dressed member of Congress for years, and so was often Page Six material for The New York Post. It's a strange legacy. (V)