After months of flirting with a potential third party presidential campaign in 2024, Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV) announced on Friday he will not run for the White House, a move that will relieve fellow Democrats who saw the senator as a guaranteed spoiler candidate.
"I am not going to be a ... spoiler, whatever you want to call it,” Manchin reportedly said at a speech in Morgantown, West Virginia. “I just don't think it's the right time.”
With several independent and third party candidates already running alongside President Joe Biden and former President Donald Trump, Manchin was one of the last potential late entrants who had not announced their plans.
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The conservative Democrat, who announced last year he would not run for re-election to the U.S. Senate, had previously done campaign-style events with No Labels, the centrist group that is promising to spend big in hopes of putting a third-party alternative on the November ballot.
Upon retiring from the Senate, Manchin said that he planned to travel the country and listen to voters as part of an undefined project to advance a compromise-oriented political approach.
Just a day before he announced he wouldn’t seek the White House, Manchin appeared to tease a run during the first of two stops in Cleveland as part of his “listening tour.”
“Everything is on the table, nothing is off the table,” he said of a potential 2024 run. “I’m still evaluating all that. Super Tuesday pretty much would be a deadline, tells you where you are, if there’s a possibility or not.”
However, Manchin also remained adamant about how he didn’t want to help Trump secure a second term by being a spoiler candidate, and insisted he would only run if he could win. He has also issued stark warnings about the prospect of another Trump administration.
At a recent New Hampshire stop in January, Manchin told CNN he didn’t even know what the plan was for No Labels.
“I don’t think anybody knows,” Manchin said. “I think it’s changing day by day, hour by hour.”
