Senator Joe Manchin says he plans on “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.”
What he hasn’t specified is how.
Will he address moderate-minded donors? Will he converse with common people in coffee shops and diners? Will he have town hall events in local libraries? TED Talks? Will he eat fried foods and examine a butter cow sculpture at the Iowa State Fair? Will he knock on doors and ask for just a minute of your time?
“You said, what am I gonna do, just go out and have town hall meetings?” Manchin said during a briefing this week with West Virginia reporters, responding to a MetroNews question.
“It’s going to be everything from A to Z and all the soupnuts in between. Anything and everything I can do to give audiences.”
So he isn’t ruling much out.
His goal of traveling America in search of the middle came out last week when he announced he will not be running for re-election to the U.S. Senate.
Manchin’s name has been mentioned consistently in speculation about a third-party run for president, and he has openly dallied with the possibility of becoming an independent.
Manchin has expressed frustration about increasing polarization in American politics. In the Senate, where 51 members caucus with Democrats and 49 with Republicans, Manchin’s independent-minded votes have often been both key to passing bills and a source of frustration to his colleagues.
He found a like-minded mini-tribe in a small group of center-aligned senators, including Mitt Romney, the Republican former presidential candidate who is retiring. On policy, he sometimes wound up paired with Arizona’s Senator Kyrsten Sinema, a former Democrat who is charting a challenging re-election path after becoming an independent.
“I know of a lot of my colleagues, Democrats and Republicans, who left here early because they couldn’t take it any more,” Manchin said. “These are good, solid Americans who are very centrist. Some of them were governors before. They couldn’t stand being here because they had to be weaponizing the party system by joining up on the extremes or leave.
Manchin and his daughter Heather have been pitching wealthy political donors on the possibility of launching a centrist political group and raising $100 million.
Manchin also has been linked with No Labels, an independent political organization trying to gain ballot access across the country to put up a “unity ticket” as an alternative to the possibility of a Biden-Trump rematch.
“Everyone says ‘Joe, are you running?’ The only thing I’m running for is to save this nation, and whatever it takes. There are people out there; there’s a lot of good people. If we can get them energized, there’s a lot of good people that could get in there,” Manchin said.
Manchin described a lot of political theory, particularly based on polling that shows both Republican Donald Trump and Democrat Joe Biden deeply unpopular. But he has not talked very specifically about a platform of policies he would consider moderate. And he has not vividly described what his travel across America will entail.
Political reporter Mark Curtis of the Nexstar television stations in West Virginia also asked about logistics: “Trying to find the middle, does that mean like the other potential candidates you go to Iowa and New Hampshire and South Carolina? How do you do that, and isn’t time of the essence?”
Manchin responded, “You’re looking all along the lines of the politics. I’m looking at the policy.”
Manchin acknowledged, though, that it makes sense to travel to early primary states like Iowa, New Hampshire and South Carolina as well as to swing states like Arizona or Michigan.
“You’d want to know what those people are thinking,” he said. “If they’re satisfied with what they have, there is no movement. If they’re not satisfied, what kind of movement do they want?”