(DCWatchdog.com) – US Senator Joe Manchin fed the growing rumors he might run for president on behalf of the centrist “No Labels” movement when he declared America’s Founding Fathers didn’t envision a nation plagued by vile partisanship.
In a new interview on Sunday, Manchin accused Republicans and Democrats of needlessly villainizing each other.
“If you’re a Democrat, they expect you to villainize every Republican. And if you’re a Republican, you should villainize the Democrats,” Manchin said on the WABC-AM radio show “The Cats Roundtable.”
“That’s not the way our founding fathers intended for this democracy to work. It was intended for us to work together,” he told host John Catsimatidis.
Manchin, a moderate Democrat from West Virginia who routinely frustrated President Joe Biden’s government spending plans in the previous Congress, once again didn’t rule out the possibility that he might lead a third-party “unity ticket” bid for the White House in 2024.
He declared that “No Labels,” a centrist political movement founded in 2010, seeks to give Americans new choices in the nation’s politics.
“All they’re asking for is, ‘Do the citizens of the United States want some other options?’” the Democrat dissenter said, as cited by The Hill.
Last month, Manchin headlined a “No Labels” event with the former Republican governor of Utah, Jon Huntsman.
Manchin’s possible third-party presidential candidacy has sparked fears among Democrats as it could draw votes from their party’s 2024 candidate, who is presumed to be President Joe Biden.
Joe Lieberman, a former Democrat US Senator from Connecticut and founding chairman of “No Labels,” spoke on the same show on Sunday, stating there was “too much hatred” in the nation’s capital.
“There’s always been differences of opinion. But today, you just don’t have a difference of opinion and a debate on an issue on the floor in Congress. You treat the other person as if they were the member of an enemy nation,” said Lieberman, who was Al Gore’s vice presidential candidate in 2000.
He declared his group would “never really stop the partisanship and gridlock” without a president committed to bipartisanship.
“If you’re a Democrat, they expect you to villainize every Republican. And if you’re a Republican, you should villainize the Democrats,” Sen. Joe Manchin (https://t.co/waPScvSVml.) said. https://t.co/WFId3tzdCi
— The Hill (@thehill) August 20, 2023
