Joe Manchin Rips Dems For Not ‘Giving a Damn’ About Workers, Says ‘Three Enormous Blind Spots’ Tanked The Party

Outgoing Sen. Joe Manchin (I-WV) spoke to CBS News’s Major Garrett this week for his podcast, The Takeout.

Garrett previewed the conversation on-air with CBS Congressional Correspondent Scott MacFarlane. “He said that he became estranged from the Democratic Party, as many West Virginians did. We discussed that in 1988, Michael Dukakis carried West Virginia, one of ten states Michael Dukakis carried in the 1988 presidential election. And ever since then, the state had been drifting toward Republicans,” Garrett began, adding:

And Joe Manchin said it’s because, in his words, hard-working, salt-of-the-earth West Virginia Democrats felt that the Democratic Party no longer valued their work or work generally. We’re looking out for people who didn’t work, giving more handouts from the government and doing less to support people who actually wanted to work. Here’s how Senator Manchin phrased it.

Garrett then showed a clip from their exchange:

You don’t give a damn about the working person anymore. You care about people that aren’t working. Don’t try to make me mainstream. Something that’s not mainstream America. It’s not what we should be teaching in our schools or what you should think. My family is not right enough. Or we don’t believe like you don’t get into that part of my life. I can handle that.

Does the Democratic Party at its upper echelon have an intolerance problem?

For people like me? Yeah, absolutely. That’s why I left.

That’s why I left.

MacFarlane then asked Garrett, “What else did he have to say? He’s got so much to unpack. Having been a governor, having been a senator here, what else did he talk about?”

“He said the Biden administration had three enormous blind spots, all of which led to the defeat of Kamala Harris in 2024: inflation, Afghanistan, and immigration. On two of those issues, Manchin has a creditable record of arguing with the White House over inflation too much spending,” Garrett replied, adding:

He warned them, he said, emphatically that this was going to cause inflation and was going to be a political problem. And he said he tussled with them over and over again on immigration. They were too permissive at the border, allowing too many people to claim asylum without any proper US vetting or nearly sufficient US vetting.

And he said that is a problem that persists. He aligns himself with President-elect Trump on that issue, prioritizing him. Maybe not all the rhetoric. They said those three blind spots in particular hampered the Biden administration and were things that Kamala Harris, once assuming the nomination, could not talk herself around or out.

Watch the clip above via CBS News.