Sen. Joe Manchin, D-W.Va., offered no definitive response this week, when asked if he planned to endorse President Joe Biden's reelection bid in 2024.
Instead, the centrist Democrat took the high road on his presidential preference two years from now.
"If Joe Biden runs again, and he is the Democratic nominee, depending on who the Republican nominee is, we will just have to wait and see," Manchin told Chris Cuomo in an interview that was released Thursday on "The Chris Cuomo Project."
Manchin has a lot to consider:
- For a Daily Caller survey back in June, only 5 of the 50 Democrat senators committed to supporting Biden's reelection bid for 2024 — Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., and Sens. Cory Booker, D-N.J., Chris Coons, D-Del., Tim Kaine, D-Va., and Jack Reed, D-R.I.
- Biden's job-approval ratings are "underwater," across the board; and in some surveys, he owns the lowest approval rating of any president in the modern era.
- The United States just posted consecutive quarters of a negative gross domestic product figure, which meets the traditional threshold of an "economic recession."
- As Newsmax noted Thursday, nine decades have passed since a Democratic Party president (Franklin Delano Roosevelt) has been reelected after leading the country into a recession.
"I am not predicting anything or how I would support or not support, or get involved or not. But I can tell you this: Whoever the elected president is — Democrat, Republican, or independent — every one of us should pray that they succeed," Manchin told Cuomo.
On Wednesday, Manchin struck an unexpected agreement with Sen. Schumer, in terms of crafting a scaled-down version of President Biden's "Build Back Better" plan from a few months ago.
The Senate still has to vote on the measure.
The $670 billion reconciliation bill pledges to invest in domestic energy, lower prescription drug costs, combat climate change, and also reduce the deficit by closing tax loopholes on wealthy individuals and corporations.
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