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And he has never budged in his even more consequential refusal to countenance any weakening of the Senate filibuster power that has doomed nearly every other Democratic legislative priority that could not be included in a filibuster-proof budget-reconciliation bill.

He did, after all, single-handedly kill the Build Back Better package before slowly and grudgingly allowing successor legislation to emerge. Now it’s possible, of course, that Manchin will still be able to market himself to West Virginians as someone willing to bring home the bacon while keeping either party from arrogant lawmaking or extremism. And so if he does run in 2024 there will be a bright-red bullseye on his back that is somewhat brighter than it would have been had he destroyed Biden’s legislative agenda entirely rather than just partially. He is not, in other words, some sort of double agent whose role in the Senate is strictly to help Republicans kill legislation. the Inflation Reduction Act) that Manchin has agreed to with Chuck Schumer is being treated by Republicans as lurid proof that the man is a Democrat. That’s right: The relatively small but not-as-small-as-recently-expected and previously left-for-dead FY 2022 budget-reconciliation bill (a.k.a. His prospective reelection opponents are already hitting him for “betraying West Virginia and destroying our economy,” as Rep. Alex Mooney (R-W.Va.) put it. In a potential 2024 race, the West Virginia Democrat would face his state’s conservative voters for what Republicans are already hoping to turn into a referendum on Manchin’s party-line deal with Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer. But now Republicans back home and in Washington are lining up to deny him reelection if he pursues it on the compelling grounds that he is no longer their reliable ally in thwarting everything Joe Biden wants to do as president, as Politico explains: Manchin did win reelection in the relatively strong Democratic midterm election of 2018, beating the winner of a contentious Republican primary by three points. If so, he will have to negotiate the politics of a state that has during his Senate tenure became profoundly Republican Donald Trump carried West Virginia by 42 points in 2016 and 39 points in 2020.

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Is his primary loyalty to his fiscally conservative principles, or to the fossil-fuel industry, or to his own sensitivities as a much courted yet much deplored figure in Washington? Virtually all answers to the perpetual What does Joe Manchin want? question assume that he is at least tentatively interested in running for a third full term in the U.S.

Photo: Tom Williams/POOL/AFP via Getty Imagesĭuring J oe Manchin’s long and excruciating tenure as the Democratic senator most willing to use his leverage to upend his party’s priorities, the motives of the so-called “King of America” have been murky. Biden isn’t the only Joe in Washington whose 2024 plans are a major mystery.