Democrat and Biden blocker withdraws from Senate
A maverick US Democrat is withdrawing from the Senate, causing political difficulties for his party. The prominent Democratic senator from the state of West Virginia, Joe Manchin, announced in a video message on Platform X on Thursday that he would not be running for re-election next year. In recent years, the 76-year-old has held his Senate seat for the Democrats in an otherwise very Republican state.
His withdrawal puts the Democrats at risk of losing the Senate seat at the next election in early November 2024. They currently only have a narrow majority in the chamber of Congress. In recent years, Manchin has regularly made headlines for blocking the plans of his party colleague, US President Joe Biden, in the Senate.
US elections and Manchin's plans for the future
A new president will be elected in the United States on November 5, 2024. At the same time, all seats in the House of Representatives and a third of the seats in the Senate will be up for grabs.
The Democrats currently control 51 out of 100 seats in the Senate. Until the beginning of 2023, they only held 50 seats there and were regularly dependent on US Vice President Kamala Harris, who in her role is also President of the Senate, to vote in deadlock situations. Manchin took advantage of the situation many times at the time to deviate from the party line, withhold his consent and thus sabotage several of Biden's major projects. The fact that the Democrats later won an additional seat meant that Manchin's potential for blocking projects dwindled in the end.
In his video message, Manchin now said that he wanted to travel the country in future and continue to speak out "to find out if there is an interest in creating a movement to mobilize the middle and bring Americans together". He left open what exactly that would mean.
The upcoming US elections in November 2024 could potentially shift the balance in the Senate, as the Democrats currently hold a narrow majority with 51 seats and Manchin's withdrawal leaves his seat open. Throughout his tenure, Manchin has often acted as a Biden blocker in the Senate, hindering several of Biden's key initiatives.
Source: www.dpa.com
