In the US Senate, he regularly made life difficult for his party colleague, US President Biden – now Joe Manchin has announced his retirement. And this step could also harm the Democrats.
An obstructionist among the US Democrats is withdrawing from the Senate, putting his party in political trouble. Joe Manchin, prominent Democratic senator from the state of West Virginia, announced in a video message on Platform X that he would not run for re-election next year.
“I have made one of the hardest decisions of my life,” said the 76-year-old centrist politician and internal party opponent of President Joe Biden. “I have decided that I will not run for re-election to the U.S. Senate.”
To justify this, Manchin said any stimulus in Washington was aimed at “making our policies extreme. The growing divide between Democrats and Republicans is paralyzing Congress and exacerbating our nation’s problems,” he said. The majority of Americans are simply exhausted.
Republican-dominated homeland
In recent years, Manchin has held his Senate seat for the Democrats in an otherwise very Republican state. His withdrawal puts the Democrats at risk of losing the Senate seat in the next election in early November 2024. They currently only have a slim majority in the Chamber of Congress.
In recent years, Manchin has regularly made headlines by blocking the plans of his party colleague, US President Joe Biden, in the Senate, including a planned billion-dollar climate protection and social package. In doing so, Manchin made many enemies among the Democrats and especially in the left wing of the party.
Biden’s climate protection package was finally passed in a significantly scaled-down form after long negotiations with Manchin last year. A new president will be elected in the United States on November 5, 2024. At the same time, all seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the seats in the Senate will be reallocated.
Manchin’s Blocking potential shrunk
Democrats currently control 51 of 100 seats in the Senate. By the beginning of 2023, they had only occupied 50 seats there and were regularly dependent on US Vice President Kamala Harris, whose role is also President of the Senate, to vote in stalemate situations. Manchin used the situation many times to deviate from the party line, withhold his approval and thus sabotage several of Biden’s major projects.
Because the Democrats later gained a seat, Manchin’s blocking potential recently shrank. In his video message, Manchin said he wanted to travel the country in the future and continue to speak out “to find out whether there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together.” He left it open what exactly that meant.