All right, more now on the news that West Virginia
Senator Joe Manchin has just tweeted out a video that
says he is not going to run for reelection next
year.
Let's go to our senior congressional correspondent Chad Pergram.
Many people might be shocked by the timing of the
announcement,
but I don't think it's much of a surprise.
Chad latest Emerson poll has got Jim Justice running 13
points ahead of Manchin.
Mansion is famously said he's never lost an election,
and it looks like he wants to keep that record
intact.
Yeah, a lot of people thought that this was going
to be an uphill battle for Joe Manchin anyway.
You know, Democrats are on the back foot going into
this election cycle because they have to defend so many
seats this time.
So many vulnerable Democrats are up in swing states or
purple states or even red states like West Virginia.
A lot of people would give a John Tester,
a Democrat in Montana, a better chance of re-election,
Sherrod Brown in Ohio a better chance of re-election.
But again, you point to that poll,
and that's a real problem there for Joe Manchin and
the Democrats in a 5149 Senate.
We've just gotten a statement here from Steve Daines.
The Republican senator from Montana,
who is in charge of the Republican Senate reelection efforts
for next year and he says,
quote. I like our odds in West Virginia,
John. Yeah, you know, he was the lone Democrat really
almost in the state.
But Jim Justice is such a popular figure there it
it looked like.
Trying to beat Justice head-to-head in the Senate race is
going to be impossible for Manchin.
So do you really think that he looked at the
writing on the wall and said,
you know, again, I don't want to.
I don't want to spoil my unblemished record since the
1990s.
And rather than facing defeat at the hands of Jim
Justice,
I'm just going to call it a day and find
something else to do.
There was part of that.
He is 76 years old.
And in his statement, if you look at it,
he, he talked about traveling the country and trying to
see if there was a way to mobilize his word
of Americans around an effort to bring people together.
Some people have wondered. Whether or not he might flirt
with a third party presidential bid,
something else. It might be,
you know, easier for Joe Manchin to be elected someplace
else than West Virginia,
which has trended hard to the right over the past
few years.
It used to be a very Democratic state and we
don't know definitively that it will in fact be Jim
Justice,
Alex Mooney, the Republican representative from West Virginia.
He is running in that primary,
also slightly to the to the right of Jim Justice.
So that's something they have to look at as well.
Yeah, let's see.
No, no, that was Mitch.
I was trying to find a head to head against
Justice and Mooney,
but I think at the moment it would seem that
Justice has got the inside track.
We'll see how it goes though,
Chad, as you point out,
a long time between now and Election Day.
Appreciate it. Thanks.