West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin has finally revealed whether or not he will be running for president this year and it is a big, fat NO, according to his spokesman Jon Kott. I can’t say I blame the guy. He has zero chance of actually winning, especially if he goes independent. Let’s face it. This is a two-party country. It sucks, but that’s how it is right now. I don’t know how you can change that at this point. Even if it could be changed, it would take an extremely popular figure to make it happen, and Manchin most definitely does not have that kind of pull.
The announcement from Manchin came while he was making a speech at West Virginia University.
Check out more details from Newsmax:
The centrist Democrat who often bucked his party’s leadership had been considering a run for the presidency and had said he thought it would be clear by March if there was a path for a third-party candidate this year.
Manchin is not running for reelection in 2024. His Senate seat in a heavily Republican state is expected to be a prime pickup opportunity for the GOP.
“I will not be seeking a third-party run, I will not be involved in a presidential run,” Manchin specifically stated.
According to Fox News:
Manchin made the announcement during a speech at West Virginia University as part of his “listening tour” that kicked off last month with his daughter’s campaign group “Americans Together” — a movement that touts itself as the “moderate majority” that rejects the “extremism in politics.”
“I’m working with my daughter, working with people that we have around Americans Together and putting all my efforts toward that,” he said Friday.
On Thursday, Manchin had stated that if he were to, hypothetically speaking, launch a campaign for the presidency, he’d call in Sen. Mitt Romney of Utah or former Ohio Sen. Rob Portman to be his vice presidential running mate.
“Hypothetically, if I was picking my running mate, really who I would ask right now is Mitt Romney,” Manchin he said to voters at the City Club of Cleveland breakfast forum Thursday.
Oof.
Horrible picks. Just plain horrible.
Nobody likes Romney. He’s the biggest sellout Republican in Name Only in the country. I get it, he’s a Democrat by ideology and thus picking someone watered down like Romney is his way of attempting to make a compromise and extend an olive branch to the Republican Party voters out there in order to give himself a fighting chance as an independent, but he could still do so much better.
“I would be the president. He would be my running mate,” Romney went on to say in a statement made to Deseret News when he was asked about Manchin’s “hypothetical” campaign. Just last year Romney announced he would not be seeking re-election to the Senate after his term expires next year.
“No, I’m not going to run for president,” he then said. “Certainly I’m not running for vice president. But (Manchin is) kind to say that. We’re good friends.”
Whew.
Looks like we dodged a bullet.
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