A seemingly obscure fight in the Senate this week over miners’ pensions quietly marked the beginning of Senate Democrats’ attempt to recover from their humiliating defeat in the November election.

After getting pummeled in the Rust Belt by Donald Trump and incumbent Republicans, a bloc of lawmakers from purple and red states, led by Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Sherrod Brown of Ohio, made the case to Trump’s voters that it’s Democrats — not Trump and the GOP — who are on the side of the working class. Flirting with a government shutdown, they used a must-pass funding bill to try to extract health benefits for retired mine workers — resorting to the budget brinkmanship typically associated with Republicans.


“I rise today fighting for the working men and women that we all use in our [campaign] commercials. Every one of us goes out and basically tries to attract working men and women to vote for us because we’re coming here to fight for you,” Manchin said in a floor speech on Friday, as he and other Democrats relented just ahead of the funding deadline. “I’m ready to go to work.”

Manchin and Brown, along with several other Democrats who took up the cause, are up for reelection in 2018 in states that Trump carried. Another poor performance for the party could hand Republicans a veto-proof, 60-vote majority.

Asked if his dayslong campaign will help his reelection campaign, Manchin said: “Well, I sure don’t think it hurts.”

In addition to Manchin and Brown, Sens. Heidi Heitkamp of North Dakota, Bob Casey of Pennsylvania and Claire McCaskill of Missouri joined the effort. They vowed to continue speaking about it on a regular basis next year, urging Trump to take their side.

Several of them bristled at the implication that it was an explicit play for working-class voters who will decide their fates in 2018.

“Look at my career on this stuff. You think I’m doing it because I’m on the ballot in two years? I’m surprised you’d even ask that,” Brown said in an interview. “That’s what motivates Mitch McConnell every day of his life: It’s always political calculation. Who’s fought for a better minimum wage harder than I have?”

Ditto for Heitkamp, who, along with Manchin, may be in the mix for a job in Trump’s Cabinet. “It’s always been who I am. The American worker is feeling left behind … we need to be responsive to that,” said Heitkamp, who has few affected miners in her state but is joining the fight nonetheless. “The reason why I am here is because I share that same sense of injustice and I’m going to fight for people who are being left behind.”

Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown addresses thousands of members of the United Miner Workers of America as they gather for a rally on the National Mall on Sept. 8. Brown, along with several other Democrats who took up the cause, are up for reelection in 2018 in states that Donald Trump carried. | Getty

But with the GOP recruiting a challenger to Heitkamp, and a Republican stepping up just this week to take on Brown, it’s impossible to separate the Democrats’ tactics from their political predicament. Ten senators are up for reelection in 2018 in states that Trump won, five in states that he won overwhelmingly.

The Senate GOP’s campaign arm joined the fray, pre-emptively dubbing the standoff “Joe Manchin’s government shutdown” and slamming Brown as the “Sierra Club senator [who] masquerades as [a] friend of coal miners.” One of the GOP's toughest political combatants, Majority Whip John Cornyn of Texas, acknowledged that 2018 was a factor in the battle but said he didn't question the Democrats’ motivation.

“I think there’s a little bit of politics always involved but I think they’re sincere,” Cornyn said.

Top Senate Democrats see an upside to the endangered Democratic incumbents’ push. On Friday incoming Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) joined the coal-state Democrats on the Senate floor and said he's “simply asking our president-elect to communicate to the people in his party to get on board” with miners’ benefits.

“It is certainly good politics to stand up for coal miners and widows who stand to lose their health insurance,” added Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois. “There’s been a lot of talk in this campaign, particularly in the Midwest, about coal and its future. I think we owe an obligation not just to coal as a mineral, but to coal miners.”

Not all Democrats embraced the fight. At a staff meeting on Friday, multiple aides to liberal senators expressed discomfort with the coal-state Democrats’ strategy, divulging that some senators would not defend a shutdown should one occur, attendees said. And in an interview, a Democratic senator privately criticized the “abrupt” ramping up of the battle during the past few days and said it is not getting enough news coverage nationally to be effective for the party as whole.

But the impasse created a unique political alliance for Brown and Manchin, who share little beyond their blue-collar home states. Brown, a former House member, is an unabashed liberal and Trump antagonist. Manchin, a former governor and perhaps the most conservative Democrat in the Senate, has irked fellow Democrats with his overtures to the president-elect.

Those contrasting postures may be partly explained by Trump's performance in their states: He won Ohio by 8 points, and West Virginia by 42.

It's entirely plausible that Manchin, Brown and other Democrats were trying to both help miners and their own political careers, even if the next election is 23 months away.

“I don’t think he’s trying to weigh the politics of this. He’s seen the hurt first-hand,” Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.) said of Manchin. “I know him well enough to know that’s not what moves him.”

Because West Virginia is the state most affected by the potential expiration of coal miners’ benefits, the Democrats’ year-end political battle could help Manchin most if he’s remembered for taking a stand for his state against liberal members in his own party.

His home-state GOP colleague, Sen. Shelley Moore Capito, said that West Virginians are cheering them on.

“We’re getting positive feedback that this is a fight that’s worth fighting,” Capito said. “Given where we live, this is really important to him and to me.”

Seung Min Kim contributed to this report.