Joe Manchin Is Still Considering a Third-Party Bid (i.e., Helping Donald Trump Win)

Last November, Senator Joe Manchin revealed that, like many Americans, he was “totally, absolutely scared to death that Donald Trump [could] become president again.” That same month, the West Virginia lawmaker warned that if Trump were to win a second term, he would “destroy democracy in America,” adding: “You can’t say that you’re going to take the most powerful office in the world and use it for vengeful purposes. You can’t have this visceral hatred spewing out every time you give a speech, denigrating Americans: The only good American is the one that likes and supports you; the only fair election is the one you win; laws pertain to everybody but you; and January 6 was a walk-in-the-park visit to their favorite place, the United States Capitol. This is crazy stuff.”

Given these comments, one might reasonably assume that Manchin would not want to do anything that could help Trump win another term in office. However, one would apparently assume wrong!

CNN reports that Manchin, who announced in November that he would not run for reelection, has said he can “absolutely” see himself as president, and has privately “told people that a Joe Biden health scare or a Donald Trump conviction could give him an opening to run as an independent this year.” News of Manchin’s private musings comes after he told NBC News that he would “absolutely” consider a bid for the White House. And not surprisingly, Team Biden isn’t exactly thrilled.

Per CNN:

[T]hree years of exhaustion at Manchin upending Biden’s agenda has left the president and top aides keeping their distance, trying to sound out what he’s up to without risking riling him up by going to him directly. They hope Manchin will ultimately decide on his own against an independent run. But they know that a Democratic senator traveling the county warning that Biden has been pulled too far to the political left would be a problem, particularly as the president and his aides try to stitch back their 2020 coalition that ranged from [Bernie] Sanders supporters to anti-Trump Republicans.

As Biden tries to assert the success of his presidency, Manchin says he shaped “everything” in the president’s agenda. In an interview with CNN as he drove in New Hampshire, Manchin said the country would have been worse off if he hadn’t used the 50-50 Senate to force Biden to do things his way, arguing, “The way it was presented and the way it ended up are two different things.”

Manchin called the president a “good, decent man” but said he worries about a second Biden term with a White House staff who he believes is dominated by a group of “far, far-left liberals.”

The Biden campaign is, of course, far from alone in worrying about the prospect of an independent run from Manchin. Last year several Democratic senators warned, in no uncertain terms, that such a bid would only help Trump get reelected. “My reaction is disappointment, deep disappointment,” Senator Richard Blumenthal told The Hill of the idea of a third-party presidential bid. “The simple, stark fact is that a Manchin run for president would undercut Joe Biden.” Senator Debbie Stabenow likewise told the outlet: “I think it would be very, very unfortunate if Joe Manchin decided to do that. I know he’s a supporter of President Biden and has been an important person here in the US Senate in terms of getting things done. And he knows that if he were to step in [to the race] that it would make it much more likely Donald Trump would be president again.”

For his part, Manchin has insisted that he would never dream of helping elect Trump, claiming that a third-party run would in no way risk doing just that: “I don’t buy that scenario,” Manchin told CBS’s Norah O’Donnell last year. He continued, saying, “I’ve heard that. And—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,” a reference to Perot’s independent run in 1992.

Earlier this month, Manchin suggested to reporters that he’d make a decision by March. “If there’s going to be an option or a need for an option, you’ll find out by [Super Tuesday],” he said. “By March, you’re going to have pretty much a lay of the land and what you’re going to have and what you’re going to be offered.”