Manchin still playing gadfly as Biden seeks to unify party for 2024
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Sen. Joe Manchin III spent much of the last two years getting what he wanted from President Biden. From policy debates to personnel appointments, Manchin almost always won big concessions — because if he didn’t, he could ensure Biden lost. Wp Get the full experience. Choose your plan ArrowRight Such was the nature of an evenly divided Senate with a Democrat from a state Biden lost by nearly 40 points in 2020. Yet the Manchin-Biden partnership proved enormously productive, as the president pushed his agenda through Congress, and in recent months any tensions between the two have faded from the spotlight.
But on Monday, Manchin (D-W.Va.) made it clear he is not finished presenting political problems for Biden. He headlined an event in New Hampshire sponsored by No Labels, a bipartisan group recruiting a Democrat and Republican to potentially run on a third-party ticket in next year’s presidential election. Not only is Manchin actively considering challenging Biden as an independent, he is also striking at the heart of a Biden reelection message that casts today’s GOP as radically different from Democrats and even from its traditional self.
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In Manchin’s telling, the two parties are all too similar. “We’re here to make sure that the American people have an option,” Manchin said Monday night during the town hall at St. Anselm College in New Hampshire. “And the option is, can you move the political parties off their respective sides? They’ve gone too far right, too far left.”
He said the “business model” of the Democratic and Republican Parties is that it’s “better if you’re divided than united. And we’re going to change that.”
Most Democrats, including those close to the president, downplay the threat Manchin poses as a presidential candidate, saying they cannot see him going through with a long-shot campaign that most analysts believe would help former president Donald Trump. But even by lending his support to No Labels, Manchin is challenging Biden’s central pitch — that Democrats help ordinary Americans, while many Republicans are extremists — by suggesting the two parties are all too similar.
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Specifically, Biden is running a presidential campaign centered on the idea that the GOP, co-opted by Trump and other anti-democratic extremists, presents an existential challenge to American democracy. “Donald Trump and the MAGA Republicans represent an extremism that threatens the very foundations of our republic,” Biden said last year.
It is that message, and tone, that associates said has repelled Manchin, who has spent much of his career promoting bipartisanship and elevating his centrist worldview — a necessity for a Democrat in an overwhelmingly Republican state.
Manchin has long supported No Labels, once serving as an honorary co-chair of the group. But this election cycle is different, as No Labels is ratcheting up its political profile and spooking Democrats who worry an independent bid will siphon away potential voters.
Manchin is actively stoking the presidential speculation. He has not announced whether he is seeking reelection next year for his Senate seat and has not ruled out an independent 2024 White House bid. Allies close to the senator said he is seriously considering all options.
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“He believes to his core that this country, the way that we govern, has to change,” said one Manchin ally, speaking on the condition of anonymity to discuss private conversations. “He is going to make this message louder. He’s not ruled anything in. He’s not ruled anything out.”
The person added, “He is seriously considering all options, including running for president. Whether he does it or not, time will tell.”
But Manchin also told the packed audience of nearly 200 people, “I’ve never been in any race I’ve ever spoiled. I’ve been in races to win.”
Manchin would face a serious challenge seeking reelection in 2024, especially since the state’s Republican governor, Jim Justice, has announced he is seeking the Senate seat in a state that Trump won by a roughly 70 to 30 percent margin in 2020. Still, Manchin has repeatedly overcome tough odds in West Virginia, serving in the U.S. Senate since 2010 and as governor before that.
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It may be no accident that Monday’s town hall, where Manchin appeared alongside former Utah governor Jon Huntsman Jr. (R), was in New Hampshire, which has historically played a crucial role in presidential nominating contests. Democrats in New Hampshire are furious at Biden and the national party for upending their nominating calendar earlier this year and giving South Carolina the first primary instead.
The New Hampshire secretary of state plans to hold the first primary regardless, and state Democratic leaders have said they have no ability to stop it. By showing up in New Hampshire, Manchin is giving the state some of the political attention of which it is otherwise being deprived by Democrats this year.
No Labels is working to get state ballot access around the country for a potential third-party presidential run next year, but the group’s leaders said they will only field a ticket if there is a clear path to victory. Since the inception of a two-party system in American presidential politics, there has never been a viable third-party contender.
Still, the concern that the effort will damage Biden has prompted a group of current and former members of Congress — including Rep. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.), the former House majority leader; Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-Va.); former congressman Richard A. Gephardt (D-Mo.); and others such as former secretaries of defense Chuck Hagel and William S. Cohen — to launch a group Monday to undermine No Labels’s ambitions.
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Former congressman Thomas Downey (D-N.Y.), who is also involved in that effort, said in an interview the idea of a third-party ticket was “delusional” and would be “more helpful to Trump than to anyone else.”
But Roland Shrull, 72, who attended Monday’s event and voted for Biden in 2020, seemed receptive to the message undergirding No Labels’s efforts, even as he acknowledged the risks of supporting a third-party candidate.
“We’re looking for an alternative from the divisiveness of both parties,” Shrull said. “Unless you have different people involved trying to push the parties to the center, there’s no incentive for them to do it. They’ll just stay on their extremes.”
For his part, Huntsman, who served as the U.S. ambassador to China and then to Russia, compared Democrats’ claims that a third-party ticket would help Trump to the authoritarian regimes in those countries that “don’t allow any choice”
“When I start hearing people here say, ‘That’s not a good thing, we shouldn’t do things to expand and enhance our participation in the system because it might result in A, B or C winning or losing,’ I say, ‘I’ve heard that before, but not in this country. Here we do it differently,’” he said to a round of applause.
All the while, Manchin has increased his criticism of the Biden administration and has steadily increased the number of Biden nominees he has opposed. In particular, he has railed against the administration’s efforts to implement the Inflation Reduction Act, the legislation he crafted alongside the White House. Last week, Manchin said he would oppose Julie Su’s nomination to serve as the labor secretary, which came after his vote against Jared Bernstein to serve as the chair of the Council of Economic Advisers.
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Inside the White House, many officials are forgiving of Manchin’s sharper turn against Biden, saying they recognize the difficult position he finds himself in if he decides to run again in West Virginia, where Trump in 2020 earned his second-largest margin of victory after Wyoming. Biden himself has often told fellow Democrats that he will stay out of their states during election years if it helps them.
Publicly, the White House has only praise for Manchin these days.
“President Biden is proud of his longtime friendship with Senator Manchin, a colleague whose character he respects, who speaks from the heart, and with whom he shares significant values,” Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, said in a statement. “The president is grateful for the common ground they have found together in office and for Senator Manchin’s frequent votes in support of the administration’s legislative agenda — including the bipartisan infrastructure law, our landmark China competitiveness package and the Inflation Reduction Act.”
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Other Democrats have a more cynical view of Manchin, however, and see his flirtation with No Labels as the senator’s latest gambit for more attention.
Early in Biden’s administration, Manchin was often a vocal holdout among Senate Democrats when it came to supporting Biden’s agenda, seizing on his leverage in a 50-50 Senate where the White House needed every Democratic vote. His opposition torpedoed the Build Back Better Better Act, Biden’s signature agenda item, though he later signed onto a slimmed-down version to give the president a landmark victory.
Without a legislative agenda to shape since Republicans took control of the House and Democrats picked up a seat in the Senate, Manchin’s influence in Washington has diminished considerably since January. The No Labels effort, his critics said, gives him his latest platform to rile up Democrats and make a show of challenging Biden, even while he voted with the president nearly 88 percent of the time in the last Congress.
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Meanwhile, Democrats in the Senate are hoping Manchin decides to run for reelection in West Virginia, since the party would have great difficulty keeping the seat if he does not.
“He’s a very talented West Virginia politician, probably the only Democrat who could hold that seat in the Senate,” Sen. Christopher A. Coons (D-Del.), a close ally of the president, said on CBS News last week. “And when he has teamed up with the president and they have delivered legislative results for West Virginia and the American people, it’s been very positive. He will not ultimately be successful if he runs for president.”
Heal reported from Manchester, N.H. Michael Scherer contributed to this report.
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Source: The Washington Post
