Joe Manchin Doesn’t Rule Out Third Party Run

Bill Clark | CQ Roll Call

When CNN reporter Manu Raju asked retiring Democratic Senator Joe Manchin if he would run as a third-party presidential candidate in 2024 as a spoiler, he replied “if I’m running, I’m winning” and left the door open to a potential campaign for the nation’s highest office.

Manchin, an incumbent Democrat from the otherwise impenetrably red West Virginia, announced earlier this year that he would not seek reelection in the Senate. 

This wasn’t exactly surprising to those paying attention: Manchin is generally unpopular within his state and faced a formidable challenge from Republican Jim Justice, who is also a former West Virginia Governor like Manchin himself.

Rumors have persisted for months that the centrist Democrat would, instead, shoot his shot for the White House in 2024 as a third-party candidate. 

This, too, is unsurprising: Manchin’s frustrations with President Biden have become increasingly reported over the years, despite the fact that he mostly voted in line with the President’s legislative agenda—though he also occasionally proved to be a high-profile dissident alongside Arizona contrarian Kyrsten Sinema.

As Raju reminded Manchin in the exchange, America’s deeply ingrained duopoly makes it nigh-impossible for third-party candidates to secure the profile, funding, and systemic support needed to achieve a genuine chance at winning the presidency. 

But third-party candidates can lure enough voters away from candidates from the two major parties to swing the outcome, particularly since the president is elected not by popular suffrage but through the electoral college.

President Biden defeated Donald Trump in 2020 with a substantial popular vote majority—but his electoral college votes relied on a mere 44,000 voters in a handful of states. 

A crowded roster of third-party challengers like Robert F. Kennedy Jr., Dr. Cornell West, Jill Stein, and potentially Manchin could conceivably absorb enough of those voters to shift the outcome. 

Still, though Manchin insisted to Raju that he’d “never be a spoiler”—and has repeatedly stressed that a second Trump presidency terrifies him—he hasn’t explicitly ruled out running for president, leaving his words and next moves worryingly uncertain.