Joe Manchin Becomes an Independent

Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV)

This past week, what once would've been a bigger story happened without a blip, but we're going to talk about it on the blog because, honestly (save for Trump's felony, which we've already discussed at length and which is going to come up a lot in June) there weren't a lot of big stories this week, and I think this is worth discussing.

Sen. Joe Manchin registered this week as an Independent, meaning that Manchin will join Angus King, Bernie Sanders, & Kyrsten Sinema as the fourth independent to caucus with the Democrats in the United States Senate this Congress.  Manchin's initial announcement was met with a quick confirmation of the only thing that matters (that he will spend the next 200+ days caucusing with Chuck Schumer, meaning the Democrats will end this Senate cycle as they began-with 51 seats), and so the question became pretty quickly-why is he switching parties?  Manchin is, after all, 76-years-old, and has fought off entreaties to switch parties for decades.  Mitch McConnell openly courted him in 2021 to join the GOP, but Manchin (in part due to a personal hatred of McConnell himself) never did it.  Retiring from the Senate, one has to wonder what he's getting out of this.

The most obvious reason that Manchin would consider this would be to aid an Independent bid in West Virginia, either for the Senate or the Governor's mansion.  Manchin is in a tricky situation, one where he'd never win a Republican primary in the ruby red state (I know no one wants to hear this after Manchin has become something of a swear word in left-leaning circles, but he's basically a socialist compared to your average West Virginia politician these days), but also one where he clearly wants to stay in the spotlight.  I think, personally, if he thought he had a shot at being what he now is (an Independent who caucuses with the Democrats), he'd do it in a heartbeat in the Senate and run for another six years.  But honestly-I don't think that's possible.  He'd be against the Republicans' best candidate (Gov. Jim Justice), one who will surely win with Donald Trump at the top of the ballot, even if as an Independent Manchin can put some distance between himself and the Biden administration.

The governor's mansion, though, is more interesting.  For starters, he'd be running against Attorney General Patrick Morrisey, whom he already beat in 2018 during Manchin's last Senate bid.  Manchin did serve as Governor of West Virginia, a job he once actively said he enjoyed more than being a Senator, but that was a while ago, and honestly...West Virginia isn't the same as it once was.  When Manchin left the governorship, he did so with healthy Democratic majorities in both the WV Senate & House, but now he'd have to face Republican majorities in an assembly where a veto can be overturned by a simple majority.  It's not clear how much, after he'd been the most powerful man in the Senate, he'd take to basically being a figurehead on legislative matters.

It's worth noting that West Virginia could certainly use a Democrat leading them for a while.  One of the worst things about the hyper-partisan stance that Republican voters have taken since Obama (and especially since Trump & Biden) is that they don't allow for the occasional red-state Democratic governor.  I'm going to show my partisanship for a second here, but it's good for red states to get moderate Democratic governors on occasion.  Just because you vote for a party doesn't mean that you agree with them on everything, and on a lot of bread-and-butter issues (education, healthcare, transportation) your average Republican politician is generally to the right of your average Republican voter.  Not having Democratic governors has let certain states like Oklahoma & Florida run rampant when it comes to their education systems, and that includes West Virginia.  The few states that have had a Democratic governor in a very red state (Kansas with Laura Kelly, Kentucky with Andy Beshear) have seen a large reprieve in this spending, and improvements in their education systems.  This is honestly why so many (including me) were really hoping that Brandon Presley would win in Mississippi, if only for a term-the state can't afford to constantly gut its institutions like this in the name of winning a Republican primary.  We've seen the opposite end of this in major cities (where only Democrats win general elections) as places like Chicago & New York have struggled to find quality mayors in their primaries.

But I will say, again, I don't think that Manchin will ultimately run.  Morrisey would still be favored, albeit by a smaller margin, and Manchin has tasted too much power to go back to such a small potatoes job.  My bet is that this was just one last play for headlines from a man who loves them.  Honestly-the biggest news that I saw this week that felt like it was reading into Manchin's future was the retirement of his former colleague Joe Donnelly as Ambassador to the Vatican.  Manchin, a devout Catholic who has talked about how President Kennedy was the main reason he convinced his father that politics was the right career for him, would be a very interesting choice for the Ambassadorship in a hypothetical second Biden term.  Even though he's an Independent, I wouldn't be surprised if Manchin's final political act might come in endorsing Biden this fall rather than run another campaign...and getting him one last position in Washington in the process.