- Gov. Wes Moore during a Sunday interview advised Sen. Joe Manchin not to run for president in 2024.
- “I would urge him not to mar his legacy by getting involved in something so foolish,” he told ABC News.
- Manchin is not running for reelection in West Virginia next year and has flirted with a presidential bid.
Gov. Wes Moore of Maryland on Sunday had a stark message for retiring Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia: Don’t taint your political legacy by running for president in 2024.
Moore, a first-term Democrat, made the remarks during an interview on ABC’s “This Week,” where he praised the Mountain State Democrat for his record as a former governor and senator. But Moore also affirmed that a third-party effort to go up against President Joe Biden would be unwise.
“I would urge him not to mar his legacy by getting involved in something so foolish,” the governor said.
Moore then criticized the No Labels movement, which Manchin has flirted with, arguing that the organization lacked any clear policy tenets.
“If you look at what No Labels is, No Labels literally has no plan, has no path, has no policy platform,” Moore told co-host Jonathan Karl. “They don’t even have a candidate.”
“What No Labels is, it’s a configuration made up of dark money that won’t disclose its donors but is, frankly, just going to simply hand an election off by being able to not actually come up with solutions, which is continuing to throw wood into this flame of disillusionment,” he continued.
Many Democrats for some time have pointed to the unintended consequences of a third-party candidate boosting the GOP presidential nominee — which at the moment is likely to be former President Donald Trump.
Manchin last week announced that he wouldn’t seek reelection in his deeply conservative state next year, and given his status as virtually the only Democrat who could conceivably hold the seat, Republicans are now favored to flip the seat next year.
When Manchin announced his retirement last week, he said that he’d be “traveling the country and speaking out to see if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle.”
Biden and top Senate Democratic leaders encouraged Manchin to pursue a reelection bid next year, but the senator decided otherwise.
While Biden and Manchin have a long history of working together on major legislative issues, their relationship had had its share of ups and downs over the past three years as the West Virginia lawmaker dismantled his huge social-spending “Build Back Better” proposal while also crafting much of the now-passed Inflation Reduction Act.
While on ABC News, Moore — who campaigned for Democratic candidates in Virginia earlier this month — vouched for Biden’s tenure in office while also boosting the president’s reelection bid.
“I think what President Biden is going to continue to show is that results do matter,” the governor said. “It’s one thing to say we’re going to rail against the system and it’s another thing to actually work to make systems better.”
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