Joe Manchin Warns Democrats Not to Drift Left, Declaring America a ‘Center-Right Country’
Senator Joe Manchin (D-WV) gave a blunt assessment of America’s current political orientation on CNN’s New Day Thursday, declaring the country center-right while personally rejecting the labels “progressive” or “liberal.”
The moderate Democrat, along with Arizona’s Kyrsten Sinema, are currently the key votes and roadblocks in the passing of President Joe Biden’s ambitious social agenda through Congress.
Manchin made the statement in response to a question from anchor John Berman about whether or not Rep. Abigail Spanberger (D-VA) was right to tell the New York Times that “Nobody elected him [Biden] to be F.D.R., they elected him to be normal and stop the chaos.”
“I believe in President Biden,” Manchin responded, adding, “I still do and I will always because he’s a good person, he’s here for the right reason. He really is in government for the right reason. We just have to work together. We can’t go too far left.”
Manchin continued:
This is not a center-left or a left country, we are a center — if anything, a little center-right — country, and this means that’s being shown. And we ought to be able to recognize that.
Manchin’s comment quickly went viral across Twitter as political journalists and commentators closely following the Senate negotiations on Biden’s Build Back Better legislation took notice. MSNBC’s Sam Stein quipped the “comment [is] sure to infuriate a few folks…”
Manchin, who serves from a state that former President Donald Trump won by nearly thirty-nine points over Biden in 2020, added:
And all my friends on the left are progressives, liberals, whatever, I said I’m not, I always say that I’m a responsible West Virginia Democrat. And I’m fiscally responsible and socially compassionate. I think most people in the middle feel that way. But I also empathize with the people on the far-left and the far-right. That’s aspirational. Come together, realize what can and can’t be done. Don’t force something that is not going to happen to make it, to make people believe it will.
Watch above, via CNN.
