U.S. Senator Joe Manchin, a lifelong Democrat who left the party earlier this year to become an independent and is now stepping down from the Senate after 15 years, issued a series of warnings to members of his former party on Sunday.
“The D brand has been so vilified from the standpoint of – it’s just, it’s toxic,” Manchin told CNN, saying he couldn’t have considered himself a Democrat “in the mold of where the Democratic party sees itself has turned into”.
Manchin, a wealthy coal magnate, said the party’s approach had become censorious and dictatorial for ordinary Americans, and he blamed progressives for the shift.
“They’ve basically started thinking, ‘Well, we want to protect you there, but we’re going to tell you how to live your life from then on,’” Manchin told the outlet.
Manchin predicted that the country is “not moving left” and said a party that once focused on basic issues, “good work, good pay,” is now focusing on sensitive social issues – especially LGBTQ+ rights – while neither nor the Republicans took responsibility for the federal budget.
The senator also said Republicans lacked common sense when it came to gun control, and that neither had taken a reasonable approach to the ongoing high number of mass shootings.
“They’re too extreme — it’s just common sense,” Manchin said of partying. “So the Democrats are going too far, wanting to ban. The Republican says, “Oh, let the good times come. Let everyone have what he wants. ”
Asked about comments by Greg Casar, incoming chairman of the progressive wing in Congress, that the Democrats would have won the election if they were more like progressive congresswoman Pramila Jayapal, Manchin replied: “If anyone wants to say that, they should be like that. completely insane.”
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The senator also blamed Kamala Harris’ White House election loss to Donald Trump in November for her struggle to cast herself as a moderate candidate after supporting progressive causes during her 2019 Democratic nomination run.
“When you try to be someone you’re not, it’s hard,” Manchin noted. The senator did not publicly support Harris’ campaign. On Sunday, he declined to say which candidate he voted for in November, but said he likes the president-elect and had recently told him, “I want to help in any way I can” and wants him to succeed.
“Every red-blooded American should want your president to succeed, whether you vote for him or not, whether you are from the same party or not, whether you like him or not,” Manchin added.
But he also said he believed it is time for a third party in the US – called the American Party – that would serve as a focal point for moderate Democrats and Republicans.
“The centrist-moderate vote will decide who becomes the president of the United States. And when they get here, they don’t rule that way. Neither side does that. They go to their respective corners,” Manchin said.
“If the center had a voice and had a party that could bring both of those — the Democratic, Republican party — back, okay, that would be something.”
In a more policy-oriented meeting on CBS’s Face the Nation, Manchin said Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson should “find out that this is the worst-performing Congress in the history of our country.”
The turmoil during the previous session, which featured a protracted leadership struggle, had left Republicans “in stitches and [they] can’t get anything through.” And he blasted the party for failing to reach out to Democrats “to continue to have a majority with some bipartisanship.”
Manchin predicted that Trump would understand his role as president “a lot better now than he did in 2016, when he won the first time.”
“He has some experience under him,” Manchin added. “He understands the process and the power he now wields.”
