Democrats fear Joe Manchin, No Labels could hand White House back to Trump
West Virginia Senator Joe Manchin is headlining today at the event in New Hampshire organized by No Labels, the third party outfit that promotes itself as “middle of the road” or “common sense” and hopes to get on the ballot in 50 states for the 2024 presidential election with a “unity ticket”, much to the Democratic Party’s chagrin.
No Labels has been around for more than a decade but is coming closer to full disrupter status now, despite being little known or understood outside political insiders.
Manchin has not declared yet whether he will run for reelection.
If he ran for the presidency as a No Labels candidate, it could not only split the Democratic vote in a way that gives the White House to the Republicans in 2024 but also hands the party his crucial seat in what is currently a finely-balanced Senate where the Democrats have a very narrow majority.
Manchin will appear today alongside former Utah governor and Republican presidential candidate Jon Huntsman, at St Anselm College in the first of a series of so-called common sense town halls No Labels is hosting, the Hill reports.
Key events
Joe Manchin appearance at ‘No Labels’ event to stoke turmoil
Good morning, US politics live blog readers, there’s a lot of action outside of Washington, DC, today – although still involving national politics and, specifically, the 2024 presidential election. Here’s what’s on the agenda:
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No Labels, the moderate group angling to get a foothold as a third party presidential force in US politics, is meeting in New Hampshire today and Joe Manchin, West Virginia’s conservative Democratic US Senator, is taking part in a town hall. The Democratic Party worries that if Manchin, who’s up for re-election, decided to run for president on a No Labels ticket, it would upend the 2024 election, split the Democratic vote and hand the White Houses back to Donald Trump.
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White House press secretary Karine Jean-Pierre is scheduled to conduct the daily media briefing in the West Wing at 3pm ET.
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Donald Trump’s apparent appetite for greater authoritarianism in the US if he is in power will translate in 2025 if he’s won the White House into a plan for a “sweeping expansion of presidential power over the machinery of government, reshaping the structure of the executive branch to concentrate far greater authority directly in his hands,” according to the New York Times.
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US climate envoy John Kerry is in Beijing meeting his Chinese counterpart, as both countries grapple with record high temperatures and punishing heatwaves driven by the human-caused climate crisis. We are currently running an extreme weather live blog and you can follow all the weather and climate developments here.
