News of Sen. Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) impending retirement Thursday sent some pundits into a tizzy, eager to remind doom-oriented Democrats that the path to keeping the Senate just got much harder.
I will not miss Man or his Chin.
Manchin’s behaving like an asshole because he is an asshole. I look forward to the day his assholish political career is relegated to the ash heap of history.
So Captain Blowhard may run as a third-party candidate… much like the start of the article mentioned, ‘eh’. I would imagine that, if it somehow gets off the ground (and that’s a big if), then he may peel away some potential votes for Trump, and none for Biden. But I think even that’s being generous, since let’s face it; Manchin’s only real visibility has been playing the contrarian to the current Senate setup, which is why I suspected he never actually dared to switch sides.
Manchin was always a shale deposit masquerading as a human. Saving nature and ourselves should be the work of government, not carbonized technofeudalism.
The most worrisome thing in his announcement video — besides a Wes Andersonian compunction for symmetry in his background — is …
Compulsion, perhaps.
I like your take on this, but I can also see in Manchin’s twisted logic that just like he mucked up the Democratic agenda by holding out on so much that he probably thinks he’s got one more chance to stick it to the mainstream Democrats one last time by messing up Biden’s re-election bid.
But, like you, I suspect more GOP voters might peel off to avoid voting for Trump than Democratic voters would be peeled from Biden.
“why make it so difficult if you’re not running for reelection anyway”
Because he’s a corrupt piece of shit who uses his senate seat to enrich himself and his friends/family. Are we still supposed to pretend that it was a ‘principled stand’? You’re right that he’s also an egomaniac, but first and foremost he’s a greedy, unscrupulous asshole.
The only problem with this thought is that those “never” trumpers might have voted for Joe.
He really seems to be lost in the 1980s (maybe very early 1990s) regarding where he thinks the Democrats are on the whole. He may have been very popular in West Virginia, but it’s not at all representative of the vast majority of the Party today. I can’t speak to how much support he might garner in WV, but outside it, I can’t imagine he gets any support.
As the great Charles Pierce always refers to him, “Senator Joe Manchin (D-Anthracite).”
Senator Black Lung will not be able to raise any money for any campaign and will do much better lobbying for the We Dig Coal coalition. He didn’t help the Dems for the past 8 years anyway and made negotiations too complicated for them, so I hope he falls down a mine shaft. It’s ok, we are going to pick up Senate seats in Texass and AZ (meaning Madame Butterfly who caucused with the Rs will not win as an I either). Getting rid of Sinema and Manchin in one fell swoop is actually great news.
I think if those “never” trumpers would actually consider voting for Joe (doubtful) they’d actually have enough integrity to vote that way despite Manchin possibly entering the race. But as repubs I doubt any of them have considered or would consider actually voting for Joe.
I agree with daled, manchin would pull more from 45-91 than from Biden.
My sincere thanks to the most valuable Democratic Senator in the caucus by a country mile, without whom Biden’s presidency would have started in neutral before it began. Nobody else comes close.
Great news if we can pick up enough seats to maintain control of the Senate.
He’s part of the “vast right wing conspiracy”, so let’s keep that in the front in our minds.
Damn shame Tuber-vile isn’t up for reelection until 2026. That one looks like a good pickup from a solid red state.
Forget the danger of a third-party presidential bid by Joe Manchin. I saw on the NYT web site this evening that Jill Stein has announced a third-party bid with the Green Party. You’d think she’d be in hiding for the rest of her life after having handed Trump the presidency in 2016.
And a coward since he doesn’t want to face a loss.
ETA: Unless you somehow can vote at age 8, I don’t know that there’s a single human being who doesn’t hate Jill Stein (8-year-olds were born in 2016).
She’s not leaving any rubles on the table.