A Dark Horse Democrat Could Be Prepping 2024 White House Run

Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) may be preparing to launch a 2024 presidential bid according to a new report assessing his recent actions released Thursday.

The 75-year-old moderate Democrat gained public attention nationwide in 2022 for his efforts to stymie his party's majority from eliminating the filibuster and steamrolling the GOP minority. More recently, he's made headlines opposing President Joe Biden's hard-nosed stance on the debt ceiling.

“It’s not rational, it’s not reasonable, and it’s not practical,” Manchin said, according to The Epoch Times.
 

“It’s not rational, it’s not reasonable, and it’s not practical,” said Manchin.@Sen_JoeManchin said President Biden is being “hypocritical” regarding the #DebtCeiling. https://t.co/h3Y6dJNyS8

— The Epoch Times (@EpochTimes) May 11, 2023

According to Axios, while Manchin has made no public intent known, he is reportedly "acting like" he's angling for a run as a third-party candidate. This would seem a logical course of action with Manchin having thoroughly burned bridges with the DNC over the last two years and likely facing a serious challenge for his Senate seat.
  The outlet reported that the senator took a break from Washington, D.C. to speak with a group of prominent Iowa business and community leaders in the Capitol and told the group he is "fiscally responsible and socially compassionate," which sounds an awful lot like a campaign pitch.

When asked by Axios about any potential presidential aspirations Manchin deflected, saying:

"Honest to God, my main concern: How do we save this nation? How do we bring people together to protect the quality of life, the values that we've had that we were raised with? That's all."

"You have got to fight for the reasonable, responsible middle and no one is doing that,” he said. “There's no options.” To put it bluntly, that isn't a 'no,' and certainly reads like a 'maybe.'

Someone extolling a search for the middle and declaring there's no candidate there could have themselves in mind to be that middle. In the mildest terms, this could throw the 2024 Biden campaign into a tailspin.

Historically, the curse of the 'third-party' kiss-of-death has been a largely Republican afflicting phenomenon dating all the way back to Theodore Roosevelt spoiling the 1912 presidential election for William Howard Taft that brought us Woodrow Wilson, the League of Nations (later the U.N.) and the federal income tax. (Nice one Teddy) More contemporarily this was last realized was when Ross Perot inadvertently handed the White House to Bill Clinton in 1992 by sidelining half the GOP vote from Geoge H. W. Bush.

While Robert F. Kennedy Jr. has been picking up appreciable steam and definitely nibbling at the edges of Biden's lock on the Democratic party, as an outsider who's been lampooned by the media as an anti-vaccine conspiracy theorist, he has a hard road to the White House. Manchin, though vilified for his contrarian takes in the Senate over the last two years has name recognition and a hearty record to fall back on. 

While he's unlikely to court much appreciation from conservatives, (he seriously is NOT a conservative by any extraction), both he and his Arizona cohort, former Democrat turned Independent Kyrsten Sinema could make a play for the less-woke indoctrinated Democrats. 

As noted by Axios, Biden's polling numbers in the latest Reuters/Ipsos poll are his lowest at 40% placing him in extreme danger of losing his own party's support.

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