June 4, 2023

Joe Manchin Isn’t Ruling Out a 2024 Run for President

He’s reportedly being courted by the nonpartisan group No Labels.

Stefani Reynolds/Getty

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The list of challengers to President Joe Biden’s bid for reelection keeps growing. On the right, we’ve got former president Donald Trump, Florida governor Ron DeSantis, former South Carolina governor Nikki Haley, a bunch of other long-shot candidates, and, in all likelihood, former vice president Mike Pence. On the left, there’s self-help author Marianne Williamson and vaccine conspiracy theorist Robert F. Kennedy Jr. 

Now, at least one more character is toying with joining the cast of 2024: On Sunday, Sen. Joe Manchin, a conservative Democrat from West Virginia, said he’s not not thinking about a possible run for president as a third-party candidate.

In May, the New York Times reported that the centrist nonpartisan group No Labels is seeking to put a third-party candidate on the ballot in 2024, and that Manchin is reportedly “at the top of their list.” When asked by “Fox News Sunday” host Shannon Bream about the report, and whether a bid for the Oval is in the cards for Manchin, he said, after some prodding, he was “not ruling anything in, not ruling anything out.”

“No Labels has been moving and pushing very hard, the centrist middle. Making common-sense decisions,” Manchin said. “People that basically expect us to do our job. And not put the political party ahead of the policy in our great country. That’s what we’ve seen happening. And there’s more noise and more extremism coming from the far left and the far right.”

Watch Bream’s questioning at about 5:15 here:

Manchin is no stranger to being at odds with the president. He’s been at the center of several contentious party-line votes under Biden, including, most memorably, in late 2021, torpedoing the Build Back Better bill, a $2.2 trillion plan to address climate change and fund social policies like paid family leave. Manchin’s decision was met with searing criticism from his Democratic colleagues.

He’s also used his position as a moderate Democrat to his advantage. Included in the debt ceiling deal Biden signed on Saturday, for instance, was final approval of the Mountain Valley Pipeline, a controversial gas pipeline that Manchin has backed for years. “Finally we’re going to finish it,” he told Bream on Sunday. “It’ll be up and running by January of next year.”

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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