There are people who will take advantage of other people when the latter are vulnerable. There are those who will take merciless advantage of hungry and thirsty people after a hurricane, by price-gouging.

There are those who will extract the last possible advantage from a dying man to give him what he needs to survive.

Senator Joe Manchin (D-West Virginia) has shown himself to be such a man, squeezing the last dollar out of unemployment benefits from a poor family in Queens, or Chicago or Houston or Atlanta, to score points with the Trump supporters in his state. He doesn’t need to do this. He is not up for re-election until 2024.

No, there must be some darker motive at play here. Is he looking for a lucrative position in the private sector? The presidency of a university perhaps? Is he beholden to a certain donor or group of donors who hold his future in their hands? Could his motive be related to someone in his family?

Or does he simply enjoy being in the spotlight, and wielding the enormous power political fortune has placed in his hands?