Will Joe Manchin be a voting rights hero?
Manchin, a Democrat, is unusual, befitting his home in West Virginia. He chooses not to have a residence on dry land near Washington for Senate sessions, and lives instead with his wife, Gayle, on a houseboat named Almost Heaven anchored in the Potomac River. He represents a blue-collar region turned overwhelmingly Republican, spanning Appalachian privation, natural beauty, the fading lure of coal, and a few dissenters claiming they belong to Virginia. Abraham Lincoln applied patriotic wisdom to the constitutional tangles long ago. It is said that the admission of West Virginia is secession, and tolerated only because it is our secession, he acknowledged. Well, if we call it by that name, there is still difference enough between secession against the Constitution and secession in favor of the Constitution.