Joe Manchin's retirement is even worse news for Democrats than you think

Double whammy.

(West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin)

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin — after MONTHS of hemming and hawing — announced Thursday afternoon that he will not run for reelection in 2024.

“To the West Virginians who have put their trust in me and fought side by side to make our state better — it has been an honor of my life to serve you,” said Manchin in a video announcing the decision. “Thank you.”

On its face, this is terrible news for Democrats.

Manchin, a former governor, was widely seen as the only Democrat with ANY chance of holding the seat for Democrats. With him out, the party will likely give up — making either Gov. Jim Justice or Rep. Alex Mooney, who are fighting it out in the Republican primary, the next senator from the state.

Which is VERY bad for Democrats. Because they only have a one-seat majority in the Senate right now. Meaning that if Republicans only flipped West Virginia, it would be a 50-50 tie come 2025. And if Donald Trump wins the presidency — as he is a slight favorite to do right now — then Republicans would have effective control over the Senate. (The vice president acts as the president of the Senate and breaks tie votes.)

And while West Virginia was the hardest state for Democrats to hold (Trump won there by 40+ points in 2020), it’s far from their only problem on the Senate map.

Democratic incumbents in Montana and Ohio are both seeking reelection in states that Trump won in 2020 too. Those races are toss ups — and are likely to stay that way right through the election. And then there’s Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Nevada, Arizona and Michigan — all Democratic-held seats that are in various levels of political peril.

And, as troubling for Democrats, is that they are playing offense in exactly zero Republican-held Senate seats. There are 11 GOP seats up in 2024. The Cook Political Report, an independent handicapping site, rates two of those seats “likely Republican” and the other nine as “solid Republican.”

Effectively losing a seat in November of an off year is always bad. But it’s even worse when you consider the Senate math — and the fact that Democrats have literally zero room for error if they want to hold the majority in 2025.

Before I go on, I want to say a word about those Democrats — mostly on the liberal end — whose reaction to Manchin’s retirement was something like “Good riddance…he’s a Republican in disguise anyway.”

It’s remarkable how dumb that view is.

Yes, Manchin is BY FAR the most conservative Democrat in the Senate caucus. And he broke with Democrats on plenty of legislation — or made it impossible to even bring up certain pieces of legislation.

But you know the only vote Manchin took that really, really mattered? For Chuck Schumer as Senate Majority Leader. Because that allowed Democrats to control the chamber. Without Manchin, that doesn’t happen. And all of Joe Biden’s agenda items stall completely. It made a VERY big difference that, despite all of his doubts, Manchin aligned with Democrats in the Senate. HUGE.

Ok, rant over.

So, yes, it is decidedly bad news for Democrats in the Senate that Manchin is retiring. But, wait. It gets worse!

Because in his retirement announcement, Manchin seemed to hint that he might not be done running for things.

“What I will be doing is traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together,” Manchin said.

👀

Manchin has made no secret of the fact that he is has been contemplating a presidential bid as a third party candidate — likely one affiliated with the No Labels movement that is now in the process of securing ballot access for just such a candidacy.

Asked earlier this fall about a third party run, Manchin deflected: “I’m not going to take any risk to jeopardize my country and the democracy that we have. But to sit back and do nothing and allow the country to keep going this way?”

Which, 👀

Combine that statement with his wink and a nod about “traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle” and, well, it doesn’t take a Ph.D in political science to conclude that Manchin is very seriously contemplating a run for president next November.

Which would be a bad thing for Democrats. Not because I think that Manchin necessarily takes a lot more votes from Joe Biden than from Donald Trump. Rather because Trump, to my mind, has a hard ceiling of 47-48% (at most) in key swing states.

See this series of tweets by the Cook Report’s Amy Walter:

The math is pretty simple. A third party candidate (or candidates) — even if they take only 1% or 2% of the vote in a given state — lower the win number for Trump. Which he desperately needs because he has such a hard ceiling of support in most of these places.

If Manchin runs, he will have plenty of company in the third party space. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. is running as an independent. As is Cornel West. And, just today, Jill Stein announced that she will run on the Green Party ticket.

“The political system is broken,” Stein said in an announcement video. “The two Wall Street parties are bought and paid for.”

Given all of the repercussions and reverberations, it’s absolutely right to see Manchin’s retirement as one of the major moments in the 2024 campaign so far. And it is nothing but bad news for Democrats.