Democrat Manchin quits party, calls it too extreme


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In a startling move, Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from West Virginia, has severed ties with his party and is vehemently criticizing its “toxic” politics as he prepares to depart the Senate. In two farewell interviews with CNN and The Washington Post, Manchin expressed his disillusionment with the Democratic Party’s trajectory.

“The Democratic brand has become so tarnished, it’s just toxic,” Manchin told CNN in an interview scheduled to air on Sunday, explaining that he was compelled to leave the party due to “what the Democratic Party has turned itself into” before exiting the Senate.

“They have essentially expanded their thinking to, ‘Well, we want to protect you there, but we’re going to dictate how you should live your life from that point on.'”

Manchin further asserted that the Democratic Party’s most left-leaning factions are out of touch with the majority of Americans.

“This country is not moving to the left,” he said.

Incoming House Progressive Caucus Chair Greg Casar, D-Texas, suggested that Vice President Kamala Harris would have won the election if the Democratic Party were more aligned with outgoing House Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, D-Wash., than with moderate independent Sen. Manchin.

“For someone to say that, they’ve got to be completely insane,” Manchin told CNN. “The American people voted.

“They had that opportunity, you know, to vote with Kamala Harris and with Donald Trump. Donald Trump, there’s not much hasn’t been said. You know exactly what you’re getting. He hasn’t made any bones about it.”

“You might say, ‘That’s too far right.’ OK. If that’s the case, then why did they go too far right when Kamala was trying to come back to the middle a little bit?”

Manchin declined to endorse Harris and did not say he had voted for Trump, but he said he gets “along fine” with Trump and told the president-elect at the Army-Navy football game earlier this month, “I want to help any way I can.”

“I want you to succeed,” Manchin said he told Trump. “Every red-blooded American should want your president to succeed, whether you vote for him or not, whether the same party or not, whether you like him or not.”

Manchin ruled out a third-party run for president against President Joe Biden and Trump, or Harris and Trump, because he did not want to merely play “spoiler,” recognizing that the middle of American politics is not sizeable enough to win an election, even if they determine the battleground states.

“The centrist-moderate vote decides who’s going to be the president of the United States,” Manchin told CNN. “And when they get here, they don’t govern that way. Neither side does. They go to their respective corners.

“So if the center had a voice and had a party that could make both of these — the Democrat, Republican Party — come back, OK, that would be something.”

A truly middle “American Party” would not have Manchin as its leader, but he would be a vocal supporter.

“I’ll be out there rooting: I’ll be the best cheerleader they’ve ever had,” he said.

Being “trustworthy” is all Manchin told the Post he had as both the left and right ultimately despised his opposition to radical political agendas.

“They tried with all their might to convince me to do things that they knew I wasn’t going to do,” Manchin said, but being a moderate voice was something he refused to compromise at his own political peril.

“I didn’t lobby for that position,” he added to the Post. “I don’t wish it on anybody. But I think both sides knew I was sincere, even when they were mad at me.”

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