Manchin Still Mum on 2024 President Run, But Is His Pushback on Third-Party Spoiler Label a Clue?
West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin continues to play it coy about his possible plans to run for president in 2024, especially if he will run as a third party candidate. But he has offered hints.
Manchin has earned a reputation as a “moderate” or middle-way Democrat who is often at odds with the extreme leftists of the Biden era. Even though most of his votes are down-the-line liberal, he has diverged from the Democrat agenda in key ways.
The conservative Heritage Foundation, for instance rates his conservative leaning as an anemic 20 percent lifetime rating, but he has come down in line with several issues Heritage supports.
Manchin has also moved to block Joe Biden’s radical environment, social, and governance (ESG) agenda, has sided with pro-life activists on many issues, and has moved repeatedly to block Joe Biden’s job-killing climate agenda.
So, after positioning himself as a centrist, it may not be surprising that the West Virginia Sen. is flirting with the idea of running for president as a third-party candidate.
With that in mind, Manchin recently participated in a campaign-style event with the “No Labels” group, which has been threatening a run for 2024, with a candidate yet to be determined. But they are working toward a run.
According to No Labels founder and CEO, Nancy Jacobson, the group is close to securing their goal of raising $70 million in order to launch a ballot access effort in all fifty states. Jacobson also says that the group plans to hold a convention in Dallas in April, where they plan to pick a candidate to represent them in the 2024 race for the White House.
Will Manchin be that candidate? He isn’t saying.
“It’ll be next year,” Manchin said, according to NBC News, adding, “Let’s see where everybody goes. Let’s see what happens. Maybe they’ll come to their senses and start doing the job they were elected to do.”
That is not a yes, nor a no.
No Labels has been the focus of a wide backlash from both Democrats and Republicans, but it seems the consensus opinion is that a third party run — especially if Joe Manchin is at the top of the ticket — will mostly tend to hurt the Biden re-election campaign, the Washington Examiner reported.
The event Manchin appeared at on Monday evening also featured an appearance by GOP apostate, Jon Huntsman, who suffered a crushing defeat for his aborted 2012 run for president when he couldn’t get enough support to survive the primaries, pulling out before the vote in South Carolina.
Huntsman, a former GOP gov. of Utah, earned the wrath of the party when he resigned as gov. and in 2009 took the job of Ambassador to China, offered to him by the radical, left-wing Barack Obama administration. His appearance at the No Labels event on Monday caused people to wonder if he was looking to serve as Manchin’s VP candidate for 2024.
When asked if he was thinking of running with Huntsman, Manchin insisted that “Jon us a dear friend,” but added, “I think people are getting their cart ahead of the horse. We’re here to make sure that the American people have an option, and the option is: Can you move the political parties off their sides? They’ve gone too far right and too far left.”
Still, that again sounds like positioning for a run.
Manchin also had a warning for the dominant parties. The Sen. said that if No Labels did enter the race, both parties would be “in trouble,” Axios noted. Manchin also praised No Labels for “moving and pushing very hard, the centrist middle.”
So far, Manchin is keeping his cards close to his vest about accepting a nomination from the No Labels group. But if he runs, it would seem more likely that he would draw tens of thousands of votes from conservative Democrats who are sick and tired of the far, far left-wing drift of the Democrat Party. And that can only help Donald Trump.
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