Sen. Joe Manchin, DW.Va., said only one poll matters, and that’s the poll on Election Day.
Manchin’s office responded to a question Monday about a political commentator calling him a “dead man walking,” referring to his political future in West Virginia, as polls show him as much as 22 points behind from Gov. Jim Justice if he chooses to seek it out. re-election next year.
“I don’t want to be mean to Senator Manchin, but he’s kind of a dead man walking in West Virginia,” David Axelrod, a longtime political commentator and former adviser to President Barack Obama, told CNN. “There’s nowhere to go. … He’s got a popular Republican governor in the state that Donald Trump won by almost 40 points. He didn’t win by much last time. So he knows he can’t win re-election in that state.”
“This is a funny comment about the polls, since the same smart pollsters said that Barack Obama’s poll numbers showed that he had no chance against Hilary Clinton, that Donald Trump could never win the primary and that Republicans would win big in 2022,” a Manchin spokesman said. “Senator Manchin’s focus is on doing the best job for West Virginia and the American people. The only poll that matters is the poll on Election Day.”
Manchin, who narrowly defeated Attorney General Patrick Morrisey in 2018, has yet to announce his plans to run for re-election, but has also once again kept the door open to a third-party presidential bid.
The No Labels party, which would field a moderate Democrat and a moderate Republican on the 2024 ballot, is considering Manchin as a possible candidate.
During an interview with Fox News Sunday, Manchin was noncommittal, saying people with a “risk management team” should have a Plan A and a Plan B, referring to the No Labels party.
“I think with a risk management team, you’d better have Plan B. Because if Plan A shows that we’re going to the extreme end of both sides, the extreme left and the extreme right, and people he doesn’t want to go there on the extreme left and on the extreme right, they want to be governed from the middle, I think there is… you better have that Plan B available and ready to go,” he said.
But Manchin did not say whether it would be included in a Plan B.
“I’m not saying who will include or exclude,” he said. “I’m saying you better have Plan B ready. Because that’s what it’s going to take for this country to remain the world’s superpower, to give confidence to people around the world that the reserve currency should be the US dollar , that the support for freedom and democracy should be the U.S. government and the U.S. Department of Defense. We can do it. You can’t do it from the extremes.”
Manchin said he’s “not ruling anything out, not ruling anything out.”
Justice and Rep. Alex Mooney, R-2nd District, have filed for the Republican nomination to run for Manchin’s seat.
— Contact Charles Boothe at cboothe@bdtonline.com
