He knows they're bad but it benefits him, just like his daughter knew it was wrong to boost the cost of epi-pens but it benefitted her to do so.

...And it's ugly.

I'm not making excuses for him OBTW.

It's one of those political calculations. Joe Manchin is a decent guy. He has no obvious character flaws. But he has to vote his district. West Virginia is a gun toting state. We're not going to get a Liz Warren there.

We have to accept what we can get. If Manchin loses, he's not going to lose to a candidate that wants to ban assault rifles. He'll lose to someone more draconian than he is on gun rights, and then we get all the other right wing bullshit that goes with it.

Never make the perfect the enemy of the good. Just like the 2016 election. It didn't matter if you liked Hillary or not. In the general election, your choice was a Democrat you may not agree with all the time and who you may personally dislike, or a fucking authoritarian scum bucket that's the most akin to Hitler than any other person who has held the Presidency.

Sometimes we have to make political calculations, or the other side will make them for us.

If he's trying to toe the line, he's failing badly.