After being asked for what must have seemed like the bazillionth time, West Virginia’s beleaguered Democratic senator, Joe Manchin, once again explained that he opposed nuking the filibuster and blowing up the institution of which he is a part. If his party wants to pass its agenda, it’ll have to play by the rules, not change them. Manchin rejected the idea that he has made himself the story by simply refusing to destroy the Senate. “To think I’ve changed my voting pattern because I want to be in a position of being that one person in the middle, that never happened,” Manchin said, getting to the heart of the matter. “Everything changed, I didn’t change.”

Progressives are pounding the table. After Manchin wrote an op-ed explaining his desire for any sweeping overhaul of the country’s voting system to be bipartisan, Rep. Mondaire Jones of New York tweeted: “Manchin’s op-ed might as well be titled, ‘Why I’ll vote to preserve Jim Crow.’” His fellow New York congressman, Jamaal Bowman, told CNN that Manchin “is doing everything in his power to stop democracy.”