During an interview Friday on MSNBC’s “Katy Tur Reports,” Sen. Joe Manchin (D-WV), who has not yet endorsed President Joe Biden in his reelection efforts, said that Biden needs to move more to the center and acknowledge the devastating mistake he has made with leaving the southern border open.
The remarks were made in response to Tur’s question as to whether or not he is waiting for Biden to take action before giving an endorsement.
Manchin responded, saying, “I think he needs to move. I really do. I think the people want [him] to say, we made a mistake at the border, a big mistake at the border, but he’s willing to fix it.”
Although Manchin indicated that he has not given up on endorsing Biden, his remarks echoed the sentiment felt by many Americans that Biden is constantly pandering to the far left.
Manchin himself is an interesting case, being a Democrat from West Virginia — a backwoods state full of rural communities nestled in the mountains. There is no doubt he has a constituency at home he has to please in order to stay in office, yet also wants to play politics with the Democratic power brokers in Washington. As a senator from a rural state with strong Trump support, somehow he still manages to stay in office while simultaneously disavowing the former president.
Sen. Manchin: ‘I cannot for the love of my country endorse Donald Trump’
Senator Joe Manchin joins @KatyTurNBC to discuss his outlook for the 2024 presidential election and shares his thoughts on both former President Trump and President Biden. pic.twitter.com/JBoXDGUBhw
— MSNBC Reports (@MSNBC_reports) April 12, 2024
Manchin continued his remarks, saying he yearned for a time when the “old” Joe Biden supposedly would have handled things differently regarding the border. What Manchin fails to understand, however, is that Biden has been in Washington for decades and has survived politically precisely by not standing on principles, but playing political power games and making sure to say the right things to the right people at the right times.
Biden’s lurch to the far-left is symptomatic of this behavior pattern. As the nation becomes ever more polarized between right and left, and the left becomes more radical, the president has simply stayed on the Democratic party train and done whatever was necessary to maintain and grow his power and influence.
For Biden’s part, he has given lip service to exploring ways to resolve the border crisis. But interestingly, what seems so hard for Biden to do was so easy for Trump.
Unfortunately for the president and his allies, their far-left policies and rhetoric have surpassed what most Americans can handle and have brought the nation to disaster, and now not even a Democrat senator from West Virginia can stomach endorsing him without at least some concession of bad judgment and an expressed resolve to improve. But fortunately for the United States, most Americans know better than to trust Biden to do anything on principle and the preservation of the nation’s security.