Democrat Senator Joe Manchin from West Virginia said Sunday that he would not rule out a potential third-party run for president in 2024 and touted the value of the “moderate middle” over the far right and left extremes after the debt ceiling package managed to avoid a U.S. default and clear both chambers of Congress.
Shannon Bream, host of “Fox News Sunday,” grilled Manchin on a recent report by The New York Times that claimed the bipartisan group “No Labels” is eyeing a third-party presidential run in 2024, a move that alarmed Democrats with the fact that Manchin sits at “the top of the list of potential candidates.”
According to the report, Manchin risks bleeding support for President Joe Biden “crucial to his re-election.”
“Is a third-party run still in the realm of possibility?” Bream asked Manchin.
Manchin sidestepped the question, saying, “No Labels has been moving and pushing very hard the centrist middle. Making commonsense decisions. People that basically expect us to do our job. And not put the political party ahead of the policy in our great country. That’s what we’ve seen happening. And there’s more noise and more extremism coming from the far left and the far right.”
“It’s always what I’ve believed. I believe that basically that’s where you make the decisions,” he stated about the political center. “You listen to the left and the right. You make sure that you leave nobody behind. And you listen to the different persuasions that they might have, concerns. But when it comes, you’ve got to make common sense.“
Manchin went on to argue for a risk management evaluation of the financial situation in the U.S. after noting the recent collapse of the Silicon Valley Bank.
“But is there a risk management team assessing a third-party run for Senator Joe Manchin with No Labels or any other option? interjected Bream.
“I think with a risk management team, you better have a Plan B. Because if Plan A shows that we’re going to the far reaches of both sides, the far left and the far right, and the people don’t want to go to the far left and the far right, they want to be governed from the middle, I think there is…you better have that Plan B available and ready to go,” said Manchin.
Manchin is not ready to rule in or rule out a possible run for the presidency
“And you’re saying it possibly could include Joe Manchin?” said Bream.
“I’m not saying who it’s going to include or exclude. I’m saying you better have Plan ready,” responded Manchin. “Because that’s what it’s going to take for this country to remain the superpower of the world, to give confidence to people around the world that the reserve currency should be the U.S. dollar, that support for freedom and democracy should be the U.S. government and the U.S. Defense Department. We can do that. You can’t do it from the extremes.”
“OK, ruling it out? Not ruling it out?” pushed Bream once more.
“Not ruling anything in, not ruling anything out,” concluded Manchin.
Earlier in the appearance, Manchin credited centrists in both the Democrat and GOP parties for avoiding a default on U.S. debt. He also thanked Senate Republicans and Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy for securing the funding for the Mountain Valley Gas pipeline in the debt ceiling pipeline.
“Both the extreme left and the extreme right voted to default — they voted against it,” said Manchin. “It was the Democrats and Republicans in the middle. So, that moderate middle, the centrists, well, we’re going to run this country. We can’t continue to let the extremes try to be the majority voice when it’s going to be the majority voting in the middle and the moderate centrists that will make things happen.”
