A retirement from the Senate, but not a political retirement. Joe Manchin, a US senator who is as embarrassing as necessary for President Joe Biden, announced Thursday that he would not run again in 2024, a threat to the fragile Democratic majority in the Senate. And his announcement further revives rumors of a possible presidential candidacy as an independent candidate next year, a possibility which would represent a threat for Joe Biden.
Elected from West Virginia, Joe Manchin is a centrist Democrat who has continued to be an itch for Joe Biden. The Democratic president had to fight on numerous occasions to win his crucial vote in the Senate and thus adopt key reforms of his program.
“I have made one of the most difficult decisions of my life and decided that I will not run for re-election to the United States Senate,” Joe Manchin said in a statement.
A seat almost lost for the Democrats
With his positioning to the right of the Democratic Party, he was able to maintain his seat in a mining and traditionally Republican state. His withdrawal for 2024 makes the election of a Republican in his place more likely, further threatening the very thin Democratic majority in the upper house.
Democrats currently have 51 seats out of 100 in the Senate. A third of them will be renewed in November 2024, when the country will vote, at the same time, to elect its president.
The Republicans control the House of Representatives. Joe Biden praised Joe Manchin’s political career in a statement, saying he had worked alongside him for years to help “hard-working families”.
Presidential candidate?
Joe Manchin, however, has not announced the end of his political career, even fueling speculation about a possible candidacy for the presidential election.
“I’m going to go all over the country and speak to see if there’s any interest in creating a movement to mobilize at the center and bring Americans together,” he said, cryptically, in a video.
Technically, there is still time for candidates who do not go through a primary to declare themselves: the majority of the deadlines in each state to be registered on the lists are between June and August 2024. Some have already launched and could influence the vote , notably the former Democrat Robert Kennedy Jr and the Green Jill Stein.
Fossil fuels
A great defender of fossil fuels in his Appalachian state, he has greatly limited the scope of Joe Biden’s climate ambitions. If it enabled the adoption, in 2022, of the immense investment plan in the low-carbon transition of the economy (Inflation Reduction Act, IRA), it did so by negotiating, with pain, a compromise with Joe Biden, who wanted a much more important text.
Kingmaker of the Democrats, he always wanted to defend the coal miners in West Virginia, rural, poor and hit by deindustrialization. He was its governor before being elected to the Senate in 2010.