Senator Joe Manchin of West Virginia said he is still considering leaving the Democratic Party and running as an independent in the 2024 presidential election.
“I would think very seriously about that. I’ve been thinking about that for quite some time”, Manchin said Thursday on MetroNews Talkline. “I haven’t made any decisions whatsoever on any of my political direction. I want to make sure my voice is truly an independent voice, when I’m speaking I’m speaking about the good the Republicans do and the good the Democrats continue to do.”
Manchin’s political plans threaten to jeopardize Joe Biden’s reelection, taking away a small but significant portion of the votes needed for the 80-year-old to win a rematch of the 2020 faceoff with Republican juggernaut Donald Trump.
In an ominous sign of what could happen next, Manchin announced he will be absent next week from an event hosted by the White House to mark the first anniversary of the passage of the Inflation Reduction Act. A senior White House source minimized the impact of his non-attendance by pointing out that it coincides with a legislative break – failing to note that Manchin had instead attended last year’s signing ceremony of the multi-billion-dollar infrastructure and energy project, held precisely during a congressional recess. The senator was a key figure on that occasion, and Biden handed him the pen he used to sign the bill as a token of appreciation for the important role he had played in its passing.
Earlier this month, Manchin and Steve Ricchetti, one of Biden’s senior advisers, had a previously undisclosed lunch meeting where they discussed ways to prevent Manchin from causing the president problems, according to two individuals familiar with their relationship who spoke to NBC News. The sources stated that the objective of their encounter was to make sure the president is not caught off guard when Manchin openly defies him, while no mention was made of whether Manchin was thinking about running for president as a third party candidate or as an independent.
Manchin said on Thursday that he didn’t believe a potential third-party presidential candidate would harm Democrats or aid in Donald Trump’s potential reelection.
“If we can create a movement that people understand that we could have a voice. We could make a big, big splash and maybe bring the traditional parties, the Democratic and Republican Party, back to what they should be today but they’ve gone off the Richter Scale, both sides,” he said.
Manchin is the only Democrat still in office who was elected on a statewide level in a state that Donald Trump won as president in 2020. Biden lost West Virginia to Trump by approximately 40% of the vote.
Kyrsten Sinema, another critical voice within the Democratic Party who last year had voted in favor of the bill, also announced that she would not attend the White House celebration because to “scheduling conflicts”.
