Posted on 11/19/2023 3:40:33 AM PST by Libloather
It was the announcement Senate Democrats were dreading.
When it came, it appeared to strike a major blow to their hopes of holding their razor-thin Senate majority in the 2024 elections.
"I have made one of the toughest decisions of my life and decided that I will not be running for re-election to the United States Senate," Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin of West Virginia announced earlier this month.
Manchin, a moderate Democrat and former governor, won over 60% of the vote in his 2012 re-election, but his margin of victory fell to just three points in 2018.
The consensus was that Manchin was the only Democrat who could win in West Virginia next year after his state shifted dramatically to the right over the past decade. Former President Donald Trump carried West Virginia by nearly 40 points in the 2020 election.
Democrats control the U.S. Senate with a 51-49 majority, but Republicans are looking at a favorable Senate map in 2024, with Democrats defending 23 of the 34 seats up for grabs. Three of those seats are in red states that Trump carried in 2020 - West Virginia, Montana and Ohio.
Five other blue-held seats are in key swing states narrowly carried by President Biden in 2020 - Arizona, Michigan, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin.
"Democrats have multiple pathways to protect and strengthen our Senate majority and are in a strong position to achieve this goal," Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee spokesman David Bergstein argued in a statement after Manchin's announcement.
(Excerpt) Read more at foxnews.com ...
Wow.
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