Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), who is retiring at the end of his term, announced on Friday that he would not run for president as a third-party candidate in 2024.
Manchin had flirted with the No Labels Party for months, leading to speculation that he would join a "Unity Ticket" if the nascent party fielded a candidate.
But it's becoming clearer that the No Labels Party is a lot of talk without much substance. Manchin declined to run either as part of a No Labels ticket or as an independent.
“I will not be seeking a third-party run. I will not be involved in a presidential run,” Manchin said in remarks at West Virginia University.
The No Labels Party reacted by congratulating Manchin, thanking him for his "efforts to strengthen the movement for America’s commonsense majority.”
“We are continuing to make great progress on our ballot access efforts and will announce in the coming weeks whether we will offer our line to a Unity ticket,” they said.
No Labels Party is on 15 ballots out of 50 with not much time left to get on many more. The No Labels people have been saying the same thing for months. "We're making great progress" in gaining ballot access. So where is it?
Manchin is no fool. He's the most successful politician in West Virginia history and knows a pig in a poke when he sees one.
A political institution in West Virginia, Manchin has held his Senate seat since 2010, previously serving as governor of the state. He has beaten the odds by winning the seat in the deeply red state, which went for Trump by nearly 40 percentage points in 2020.
Gov. Jim Justice and Rep. Alex Mooney (W.Va.) are now running in the Republican primary to succeed Manchin, a race the GOP is favored to win in November with Manchin retiring.
Whither now, third-party candidates? Robert Kennedy far and away gets the most support, 18% in the Harris poll from last month. The only other declared third-party candidate is radical bomb-thrower Cornel West. He's not even registering in most polls.
It's accepted that Jill Stein will once again get the Green Party nod. The Libertarian Party will have its convention in May, where several candidates are vying for the nomination. Those two parties could draw as much as 10% of the vote given America's reluctance to have a Biden-Trump rematch.
Or the race could revert to form and those candidates get no more than 4-5% of the total vote.
Kennedy's numbers reflect the fact that both Trump and Biden are weighed down by negatives. It's the most messed-up electorate I've covered in 45 years of writing about national politics and we still have eight and a half months to Election Day.
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