Joe Manchin Thinks People Like Him

Maybe he needs a cognitive test.

This is Joe Manchin’s last year in the Senate, but before we can celebrate, we must wait around and see if he ends his career with a giant wrecking ball to democracy.

Manchin has teased a potential presidential run as a third-party candidate (or fourth, I guess, if you consider Robert F. Kennedy Jr, and I try not to). He insists that President Joe Biden has been pulled too far to the left and that Americans have a fever for some milquetoast moderate in the White House. He has no proof for these claims, just his massive ego.

The senator from West Virginia is on a nationwide “listening tour” — potential presidential candidates insist upon this condescending form of outreach — and stopped for a Q&A Thursday at a City Club of Cleveland breakfast. The event apparently had a Phil Collins theme: No Jacket Required.

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Manchin still hasn’t decided if he’s running, although he’s given himself a Super Tuesday deadline.

“Third party run, everything is on the table,” he said. “Nothing’s off the table.” (Everything’s about tables with him.) “I’m still evaluating all that. Super Tuesday pretty much would be a deadline that tells you where you are.”

This is a somewhat meaningless deadline, as there’s no actual suspense regarding the eventual Democratic and Republican nominees. Donald Trump is a week away from humiliating Nikki Haley in her home state of South Carolina, and while the Dean Phillips Comeback is a great name for a 1970s disco act, it’s not a political possibility.

Manchin did reveal who he’d ask to serve as his imaginary vice president. The audience indulged him and listened rather than just walking out, as I would’ve done. Maybe they hadn’t finished their breakfast.

The Recount posted this clip on social media:

“Hypothetically, if I was picking my running mate,” Manchin said, “really who I would ask right now is Mitt Romney.”

Now, that’s a thrill ride of a ticket: Manchin/Romney 2024: How Are You Still Awake?

Unlike Manchin, Romney has actually won a major party’s presidential primary, and he’s already rejected an independent vanity campaign. Does Manchin have a backup?

“Maybe Rob Portman,” he said. Portman is the former senator from Ohio whose seat J.D. Vance claimed for the United States of MAGA. “Rob’s a dear friend of mine. What a good man.”

So, no women or minorities? There’s a good chance Trump’s VP won’t be another bland white guy, but it’s exclusively a restricted club ticket for Manchin.

Republicans Portman and Romney were fellow members of Manchin’s boring bipartisan brigade, but so were Lisa Murkowski, Susan Collins, and Kyrsten Sinema, who probably won’t have a job next year, either. He can’t consider a woman running mate? Sinema is 48, so by Senate standards, she’s probably not old enough to drive a campaign bus alone at night but that doesn’t matter. She prefers traveling on private jets.

The collective age of Manchin’s proposed ticket shows that he’s not taking this seriously. He’ll be 77 on Election Day, and while he’s chronologically five years younger than Biden, his actual thinking is fossilized. Romney also turns 77 this year, and Portman is a youthful 68. The media and bad-faith politicians are obsessed with Biden’s age but apparently it’s fine if these Expendables unite for one last job. Kamala Harris was 56 when she became vice president. Biden did recognize that he was not immortal and that a prominent voice from another generation, gender, and race was important.

Who even likes Joe Manchin?

The wacky Electoral College aside, winning the presidency requires a certain level of popularity. Manchin’s approval ratings are abysmal. He’s one of the least popular senators in the country, and only 42 percent of West Virginians rate him favorably. This was actually a slight improvement from a previous low of 38 percent. That’s probably why Manchin isn’t running for re-election. Republican Gov. Jim Justice was polling double digits ahead of him in a hypothetical Senate matchup. Justice’s own approval rating is a massive 66 percent, and he boasts a higher approval rating than Manchin among West Virginia Democrats. Manchin’s far too vanilla to enjoy a public ass whooping.

Democrats were supposed to kiss up to Manchin because he held onto a Senate seat in hard-right West Virginia, but many of Manchin’s specific policy choices didn’t improve his political situation. It’s as if he wasn’t actually listening to these voters. Most West Virginians supported the initiatives in Biden’s ambitious Build Back Better legislation, including universal pre-K and clean energy investments. Manchin still went on Fox News a week before Christmas to announce he was killing the bill. His Vertigo-like obsession with the filibuster didn’t benefit a single West Virginian other than Manchin.

Manchin claimed that the January 6 Capitol attack “changed him,” but the transformation was less than inspiring. He became a feckless obstacle to any systemic change that might address the rising fascist movement that had consumed the GOP.

Of course, the MSNBC audience, centrist political consultants, and corporate donors all think Manchin’s a righteous dude. A major contributor to his coffers is the No Labels Problem Solvers, which is building a third-party campaign for the candidate they assume will come out from the corn fields. No Labels won’t reveal who’s funding them but the mysterious billionaires have been in Manchin’s ear for a while.

The Intercept reported back in June 2021 that Manchin had appealed to No Labels donors for help flipping some Republicans from “no” to “yes” on the January 6 commission. He argued that this would weaken the Left’s argument for killing the filibuster. He suggested the wealthy donors could subtly influence retiring Sen. Roy Blunt from Missouri.

“If some of you all who might be working with Roy in his next life could tell him, that’d be nice and it’d help our country. That would be very good to get him to change his vote. And we’re going to have another vote on this thing. That’ll give me one more shot at it.”

Blunt still voted no and Republicans successfully blocked the independent January 6 commission. Manchin might’ve noticed that Republicans were more afraid of MAGA than they cared about “bipartisanship.”

One label does fit for Manchin: DUMMY

Democrats don’t resort to stochastic terrorism, so if Manchin’s No Labels friends make it worth his while to launch a spoiler campaign, there’s nothing stopping him aside from shame. Senate Democrats have pleaded with him not to run, reminding him that Biden’s entire legislative agenda, including a major infrastructure bill, only passed with his approval. He should take victory laps with the president, not trip him near the finish line.

Even Manchin’s proposed wingman Romney advised against an independent run and suggested simply supporting whichever party’s nominee “wasn’t stupid.” Haley might’ve qualified for Romney but it’s become clear the only choice is Biden, unless you want Trump to win. And Manchin wouldn’t want that, would he? Perish the thought! No, Joe Manchin isn’t a spoiler! He’s just not very bright, which makes it easy for him to reject all recent political precedent.

“I don’t buy that scenario,” Manchin told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell during one of his many attention-seeking interviews. “I’ve heard that … and I wouldn’t buy that scenario, because if you look back in history, how things have played out, I don’t think that they thought Ross Perot would elect Bill Clinton.”

When Perot ran as an independent in 1992, he specifically targeted incumbent President George H.W. Bush and highlighted voter dissatisfaction with the economy. Bush was getting hammered from both sides. It’s possible that as another “change” candidate, Perot might’ve pulled votes from both Bush and Clinton. (That’s still a matter of debate.) What we do know is that the incumbent lost. Joe Biden is the incumbent in 2024. Does he need a small child to draw him a diagram?

After Manchin announced his retirement from Congress, Democratic strategist Jonathan Kott, who once advised the senator, said Manchin “will see if he can mobilize what he thinks is a moderate majority of voters, people who want their government to get stuff done and not the people who focus on the fighting of the extremes of each party.”

There’s only one major political party ruled by cackling hyena bandits who can’t govern. Kott echoes the same nonsense Manchin told O’Donnell about how both parties are at fault for our political divisions. This simply isn’t true. Biden actively sought bipartisan solutions on infrastructure and gun safety. Republicans threaten to shut down the government or blow up the economy if they don’t get everything on their ransom list. They pursue partisan vendettas, block legislation they once supported at the whim of a madman, and enable foreign dictators. A Manchin candidacy won’t promote centrist politics, it will just further empower these dangerous, anti-democratic forces. Maybe if Manchin spent more time talking to women and minorities in Congress, they could explain all this to him.

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