Joe Manchin Announces He Was Totally Kidding About That President Thing
Senator Joe Manchin has officially plucked his tentative cap out of the proverbial ring, announcing that he will not be running for president in an already chaotic election year.
“I will not be seeking a third-party run. I will not be involved in a presidential run,” he finally said Friday, in a speech at West Virginia University. “I am not going to be a deal breaker, if you will, a spoiler.”
That’s exactly what everyone had been warning him about for the last year.
Manchin, a so-called conservative Democrat from West Virginia, had previously announced that he would not be seeking reelection in the Senate, instead spending months traveling across the country to see if he could be the one to “bring Americans together” as a third-party candidate. That is, despite his legacy as a consistently stubborn vote in a narrowly divided Senate.
“Everyone says ‘Joe, are you running?’ The only thing I’m running for is to save this nation, and whatever it takes. There are people out there; there’s a lot of good people. If we can get them energized, there’s a lot of good people that could get in there,” Manchin told reporters in November.
On Thursday, Manchin had not ruled out tapping Senator Mitt Romney or Ohio Senator Rob Portman as a possible running mate, reported local West Virginia publication MetroNews.
Although Manchin’s candidacy was so quiet it practically could have stayed a secret, his push for the White House came after years spent in frustration and tumult over American polarization that increasingly evaded middle ground.
“I know of a lot of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, who left here early because they couldn’t take it anymore,” Manchin said. “These are good, solid Americans who are very centrist. Some of them were governors before. They couldn’t stand being here because they had to be weaponizing the party system by joining up on the extremes or leave.”
The 76-year-old lawmaker’s unsurprising exit comes at a time when both major candidates, GOP front-runner Donald Trump and incumbent President Joe Biden, are already facing critical heat related to their age. The race breaks a record, set only by each candidate four years earlier, for the most elderly contenders gunning for the most powerful leadership post in the world.