Manchin has been pretty open about stating his views and priorities. He is not a secret Republican agent working to bring down Biden, he is a conservative Democrat. He has been a steadfast supporter of the filibuster and has not been shy to say so. He opposed raising the corporate tax rate to 28% as originally proposed by Biden and he said so. He also said he could support raising it to 25% instead, and seemingly that is what the emerging legislation now is proposing.
His "moderate block" of Democratic Senators (2+ members) has been trading "warnings" with the progressive block about what level of expenditures deemed acceptable. Manchin called for 2 or 2.5 Trillion. Sanders wanted 6 Trillion or so. Now the working target is 3.5 Trillion.
While I am displeased, to say the least, with some of the positions and priorities Manchin professes, I have no reason to doubt that is isn't his literal goal to blow up the Biden presidency. He has leverage to back up his bargaining position, but he knows that other Democrats do also. Manchin supports a lot of Biden's economic agenda because it is good for the citizens of his state. As long as his corporate backers are not too directly threatened by such provisions he can back many. That is all part of the push and pull behind the scenes,
Manchin has a voting record much closer to the overall Democratic agenda than does West Virginia's other Republican Senator, even though she is viewed as being more "moderate" than most of the Republican caucus in the Senate. He gives support to Biden in many cases when she does not. Earlier this year I took note of reporting that Manchin was on board with some of the clean energy provisions that Biden was advocating for. Specifically they included sending a boat load of money to states like West Virginia to transition toward clean energy jobs to help displaced miners and the like.
Manchin knows that even the free market so to speak does not support fossil fuel usage over emerging alternative energy souses and that "the handwriting is on the world." But he isn't adverse to milking some more dollars for the fossil fuel complex from the feds targeted for his state and his backers if he can win that concession as the price for his vote. And for simple politics alone, Manchin no doubt cares about the actual language in pending legislation, aside form the actual substance. If the preamble to clauses sounds militantly anti-fossil fuels, that can be used against him by Republicans back home.
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