Conservative lawmaker Joe Manchin - who’s still somehow a registered Democrat - has backed away from his openness to reforming the Senate filibuster.

In an op-ed published in the Washington Post, Manchin argued:

“There is no circumstance in which I will vote to eliminate or weaken the filibuster. The time has come to end these political games, and to usher a new era of bipartisanship where we find common ground on the major policy debates facing our nation.”

Manchin further wrote, “Every time the Senate voted to weaken the filibuster in the past decade, the political dysfunction and gridlock have grown more severe. The political games playing out in the halls of Congress only fuel the hateful rhetoric and violence we see across our country right now.”

Without reforming the filibuster at the very minimum, Democrats wouldn't be able to pass election reform legislation. But that doesn’t seem to be much of a priority for Manchin.

“Our ultimate goal should be to restore bipartisan faith in our voting process by assuring all Americans that their votes will be counted, secured and protected,” he wrote.

"How exactly do you find bipartisan solutions to issues when the Republican party literally tried to overturn the results of the elections? How do you have the guts to speak to the American people and argue that the people playing the tricks are the ones who want to do away with the legislative filibuster that effectively allows for bills to go to the Senate to die?" questioned Ana Kasparian.

"Oh so I guess the solution is to keep the legislative filibuster that requires 60 votes to pass any legislation in a 50/50 split senate. Okay," she said.

"I'm amazed at how little politicians in Washington know about politics - I'm kind of am amused that everybody doesn’t know Joe Manchin was working for his donors because it’s so blindingly obvious," said Cenk Uygur.

"For example, on minimum wage he said 'I'm a conservative from West Virginia so I am going to vote against raising the minimum wage.' Shockingly the people of West Virgina overwhelmingly want higher wages," he explained.

"Why is he lying? Could it be the millions of dollars that he’s getting from corporations?" he added.

"Conflicts of interest are legal in our country," said Kasparian. "Politicians can invest in stocks, politicians can invest in businesses and that obviously provides some sort of bias against regulations and actual policy that would impact those businesses - the whole system is broken," she explained.

"He says maniacal things like the people of West Virginia don't want to raise corporate taxes they don't want big businesses to pay their fair share. It’s insane! When Joe Manchin says ‘people of West Virginia’ want something, just take out the words ‘people of West Virginia’ and put in ‘my corporate donors.’ You’ll have the correct answer 100% of the time," said Uygur as he questioned why progressives in Congress don't call out their corporate friendly Democratic colleagues.

"Democrats, particularly progressives, you have the choice...Republicans are irrelevant now. Your main political opponent is Joe Manchin," he said.

Progressives in Congress proudly boast of not accepting campaign contributions from corporate donors, yet they seem unwilling or unable to criticize their fellow Democrats who do engage in this corrupt practice. Why do you think that is?

Let us know at tyt.com/polls/calling-out-corruption