The Point: What Joe Manchin gets wrong about the Senate
 September 30, 2021 | by Chris Cillizza and Lauren Dezenski What Joe Manchin gets wrong about the Senate  On Thursday afternoon, barraged by reporters asking about criticism from the left for his opposition to a $3.5 trillion budget package, West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin offered progressives some advice:
If they want a bigger, more costly bill, they should "elect more liberals."
Which is a good line! But Manchin misses the mark when it comes to the modern Senate, which has grown far more partisan and watched its moderate center erode away.
According to GovTrack's ideology ratings, there are only two sitting Democratic senators -- Manchin and Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema -- who rank more conservatively than the least conservative Republican. The middle is slightly more robust on the Republican side, with six GOP senators ranking more liberally than the least liberal Democrat.
That lack of an ideological center is borne out in other ways as well.
This chart from VoteView paints the reality of the disappearing middle in stark terms, with every senator ranked based on their voting record in the current Congress.
The number of states that send a split partisan Senate delegation to Washington is just six, the lowest it has been in more than 100 years, according to a Pew Research Center analysis.
(Sidebar: These Senate numbers are consistent with the overall march of people to their respective partisan camps. A Pew survey earlier this decade showed that 94% of Democrats were more liberal than the median Republican while 92% of Republicans were more conservative than the average Democrat.)
Those numbers too much for you? Just go back two decades and look at the senators serving. (Thanks to VoteView, we can do this easily.)
In the 107th Congress, which was in session from 2001 to 2003, Georgia's Zell Miller, a Democrat, was far more conservative than at least a half dozen Republicans. The ideology of the voting records of Democratic Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson was virtually indistinguishable from those of Republican Sens. Jim Jeffords of Vermont and Lincoln Chafee of Rhode Island.
The issue, then, with the Senate is not that there aren't enough liberals. Or conservatives. By the numbers, there are far more than there were a decade and especially two decades ago.
The issue is that there are so few moderates -- especially on the Democratic side -- that when the margin between the parties is narrow (as it is now), a single senator, like Manchin, has almost total power.
The Point: The disappearing middle in the Senate has consequences. And one of the big ones is to make the few senators -- like Manchin or Sinema -- who still peg themselves as centrists hugely powerful in moments just like this.
-- Chris QUOTE OF THE DAY "I do not plan on not doing anything." -- House Speaker Nancy Pelosi on the fate of the chamber's looming vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill, despite threats from progressive members of her caucus to tank it if it is not tied to the larger Biden agenda budget bill. THURSDAY'S MUST-SEE TWEETS  1. Vaccine mandates work. A 🧵. 2. Finally some good Covid news -- in map form! 3. Best. Halloween. Decoration. 4. It is known 5. Ronald Reagan, pitcher 6. This is a good 🧵 on how awful the Patriots' wide receivers have been 
CHRIS' GOOD READS  It's useful from time to time to remind yourself of how much power the Supreme Court has and how former President Donald Trump transformed its makeup with three nominees in his four years. This CNN piece details the struggles and frustrations of liberal Justice Sonia Sotomayor.
A very smart story by Politico on how people who "somewhat" disapprove of how Joe Biden has performed as President hold Democrats' fate in their hands in the 2022 midterms.
Jon Stewart is back. But this time on streaming. A good deep dive by the Wall Street Journal on what's riding on his new talk show.
I love this from The New York Times: All the classics that its book reviewers panned when they came out.
MUSICAL INTERLUDE I am struggling to wait for the new War on Drugs album -- due out October 29 -- but the good news is this: The band is releasing a song (or so) every week. The latest is the title track, called "I Don't Live Here Anymore."
-- Chris THIS POLL SHOULD TERRIFY DEMOCRATS  A new poll out of Iowa has put Democrats on red alert, as President Joe Biden's job approval rating hits a term low in the Hawkeye State.
In the latest episode of The Point, Chris talks about what these new numbers out of the early voting state mean for 2022, 2024 and beyond.
Stick with The Point on YouTube and subscribe!
MEANWHILE, IN IDAHO  Idaho election officials just investigated claims of widespread fraud during the 2020 election and found a whole lot of nothing, Chris writes.
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