Joe Manchin’s retirement is not good news for us – but not for the reason you’re hearing

Troublesome Democratic Senator Joe Manchin announced today that he’s retiring and won’t seek reelection in West Virginia in 2024. This set off a round of elation on social media, with the phrase “Good Riddance” trending on Twitter. It also set off a round of doomsday hysteria about how Manchin will supposedly run for President in 2024 and cost Joe Biden the election. But both these things are nonsensical.

For starters, as much as we all justifiably hate Joe Manchin over all the things that he’s blocked us from doing, his retirement from the Senate is a bad thing for us. Without him in the race, the Democrats have no chance of keeping that Senate seat. The Democrats won’t even come within seven points of winning that race in 2024. So we’ve now lost a Senate seat.

For all of Manchin’s problems, he reliably voted for nearly every judicial nominee that Biden put forward. In numerous such instances in 2021 and 2022, he was the deciding vote in getting judges confirmed. If Manchin’s seat had been held by a Republican these past few years, there are at least a hundred Biden judges who wouldn’t be on the bench. None of this is to defend Manchin. There’s nothing to defend. He’s a corrupt clown. But there was serious value in having him in the Senate, and now he’ll be replaced by a far right Republican who will vote against every judge that Biden nominates in his second term.

Moreover, Manchin was probably the Democrats’ only realistic path to come out of the 2024 election with 51 Senate seats. With his retirement, the ceiling for the Democrats is 50 Senate seats, and thus a de facto majority with Biden’s reelection. So this is obviously not a good thing, on any level, for the Democrats.

But all of that is being overlooked, because social media is being dominated today with hysterically over the top claims that Manchin is going to run for President in 2024 as a third party candidate and cost Biden reelection. What’s this all based on? Well, nothing, really.

Manchin has occasionally appeared with a meaningless sideshow group called No Labels, which only exists to fleece gullible “both parties are bad” types out of their donation money. Manchin doesn’t appear to have any inclination to actually run for President. Instead he appears to be palling around with the group a bit for the sole purpose of making some money along the way. But Manchin has already publicly stated that he has no intention of running unless he sees some evidence that he can actually win. He seems to be setting the stage of lining his pockets for a bit by pretending like he’s going to run, only to then turn around and admit that he has no chance of winning. He’ll probably then try to get some kind of last minute pork barrel thing in the Senate before he retires, in exchange for endorsing Biden on his way out the door. This is how money grubbers like Manchin actually operate.

But because we live in an alternative la la land where most of the prevailing political narratives we hear on TV and Twitter are fictional, everyone seems excited that Manchin is quitting the Senate (even though it’s a serious loss for us) and everyone seems panicked that Manchin is going to magically change the outcome of the 2024 election (even though that’s not what he’s ever trying to get out of politics). Days like this make me wish more people would pay attention to how things actually work in politics, instead of just latching onto whatever nonsensical prevailing narrative comes along.