by liberal japonicus
This post has been rattling around in my mind and the recent discussion has me try and put this up, though it is unfinished. First, a name that I knew, sort of a second order relationship (I know several people who knew him) popped up in this headline
What Joe Manchin told Steve Clemons at dinner
What I didn't realize was that Steve Clemons was "Editor At Large of The Hill, D.C. operator and Joe Manchin’s confidant.". I want to note a few things about him, but first, to summarize the article, it tells how Clemons (who is gay) ended up working with Manchin over the repeal of Don't ask, don't tell. Clemons was the one who suggested that Manchin go on with Rachel Maddow.
Fastforward to the more immediate present,
Ryan: I heard that last night [the night of January 12] you had an interesting dinner.Steve: Yeah.
Ryan: So, who did you have dinner with last night, Steve?
Steve: The first dinner or the second dinner?
Ryan: Well, I don't know. Let's hear it.
Steve: No, I mean, like sorry, I gotta be careful, but I had dinner with Joe Manchin and with Randi Weingarten at Cafe Milano. And I think, Randi...
Ryan: This is on the eve of when Joe Biden is going up to the Senate to speak at the caucus lunch and basically try and pressure [Senators] Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to change their views on the filibuster and support voting rights. So this is on the eve... You're having dinner with Joe Manchin on the eve of one of the most important days of his Senate career.
Steve: I can talk about what I think the players are doing [unintelligible]. I'd rather not talk just about the conversation at the dinner.
Ryan: Well, I think it's been reported that Randi was trying. Randi helped him with the compromise voting rights legislation.
Steve: What Randi did, she said, look, you had a problem... So much of Washington, I just wanna be honest with people, is sometimes... It's not a function of corruption or special interests. It's sometimes just a function of lack of imagination, or people are driven by inertia. I kind of see a role that fits with my role as an opinion journalist. I'm not a reporting journalist, right? So that's a different, big difference, as somebody who has views and attitudes. But I try to be responsible and transparent about it in responsible ways. I also see my role as one of opening the aperture of different people who are in conflict or who are not there. Opening aperture so they can see possibilities they might not have otherwise thought they had. I look at that as a legitimate and actually a needed part of my role in Washington, right?
I think the point is that Joe Manchin, I knew, believed that S.R. 1 was too packed with things that were unrelated to the openness or the constraints on voting, and also that it was packed with issues that were more about social reform than they were about dealing with the voting questions. And he was dead, dead set against S.R. 1. What he was for was the John Lewis Voting Rights Act. But anyone that looked at the John Lewis Voting Rights Act, which is commendable and important, knows it does not go far enough to address many of the problems in voting that we had seen recently, particularly with voter suppression and various kinds of things. I think that his take was we needed to modify this. I humbly suggested "Well what you're really doing is talking about John Lewis Plus." Randi suggested talking to Stacey Abrams, and he, in a Joe Manchin way — because he's tried to be very chivalrous, very magnanimous — [said] "Yeah, sure. Sure, we'll do that." But there was a long time before that call with Stacey actually happened. They had multiple calls, and then he and Stacey really worked on putting together a voting rights outline of things that laid out some things, like voter ID that were uncomfortable for the Democrats but were potential pathways for Republican support. But they kind of cobbled it, something, together. Barack Obama and other people came along and applauded it. Even Joe Biden says "I applaud it." So they came up with something.
Now, I have not followed the voting legislation closely, so perhaps some folks can weigh in with more details about Manchin and 'John Lewis Plus". But I want to talk about Clemons. His wikipedia page, is a bit short on details but as I understand it, he was a protege of Chalmers Johnson. The wikipedia page emphasizes his journey from a 'cold war warrior' to a critic of American imperialism, but "As a public intellectual, he first led the "Japan revisionists" who critiqued American neoliberal economics with Japan as a model, and their arguments faded from view as the Japanese economy stagnated in the mid-1990s and later." I suppose that is one way to look at it, but being in Japan, he was someone who raised a lot of trenchant criticisms about the Japanese system. Johnson was placed in a box called 'revisionists' after his publication of MITI and the Japanese Miracle: The Growth of Industrial Policy, 1925-1975. While it is really difficult to give a precis of the arguments, the reason I know Clemons name is in that regard.
As Japan became irrelevant, Clemons decamped to Washington, working at the Atlantic and is now Editor at Large for The Hill. My impression of The Hill is that in its click-baity approach to politics, it ends up in a right leaning space such that I never click on any link from them.
In looking for more background on Clemons, trying to understand why he would want to be 'Joe Manchin's confident', I came across this interview in the Washington Blade, a publication which says that it is "The oldest LGBTQ newspaper in the U.S. covering the latest gay, lesbian, bisexual and transgender news in Washington, DC and around the world." The interview has this line
If your life were a book, what would the title be?
“America’s Gay Machiavelli”
There's a lot of ways to take that, and my take is going to wrapped up with the fact that I'm in Japan, wondering if I should have decamped. Or been more of a go-getter. I didn't have Clemons' goals of 'Improving the direction of U.S. foreign policy — getting Israel/Palestine resolved, ending the Afghanistan war, getting Iran on a non-nuclear course, normalizing relations with Cuba, etc." but if I have to be honest, part of my disgust with that line is possibly fueled by resentment. So, as it always is, it is more about me than him. Still, I wonder how a gay man who pats himself on the back about getting Manchin to move on DADT feels as 'Manchin's confidant' in the current political situation, especially after reading this in the first piece.
Ryan: This is on the eve of when Joe Biden is going up to the Senate to speak at the caucus lunch and basically try and pressure [Senators] Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema to change their views on the filibuster and support voting rights. So this is on the eve... You're having dinner with Joe Manchin on the eve of one of the most important days of his Senate career.Steve: I can talk about what I think the players are doing [unintelligible]. I'd rather not talk just about the conversation at the dinner.
This doesn't mean that I think every discussion should be on the record. But I imagine that there is a tricky balancing act and even if he wants to call out Manchin, he can't. Which to me explains a lot of our problems. At any rate, discuss.
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