Former West Virginia Democrat Senator Joe Manchin spent most of his career in Congress beating his chest in front of TV cameras about his “moderate” identity while toeing the party line on virtually every vote. But his latest book nonetheless takes Democrats to task for their lurch to the left and provides some embarrassing new details about the Biden administration and the state of the party.
Dead Center, which came out in mid-September, offers new glimpses into Manchin’s time as a senator from 2010 to 2025. He is reportedly considering a third-party presidential run in 2028 after flirting with the idea in 2024, the same year he switched his affiliation to “Independent.”
In the book, Manchin touts how he criticized former President Joe Biden’s massive $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan spending spree in 2021. “Manchin recalled that he once called Biden ‘reckless’ to his face over the American Rescue Plan negotiations, telling Biden that he was ‘sending a f–king check to everyone,’” according to a copy of the book obtained by Punchbowl News.
The former senator also criticizes then-Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) for attempting to get rid of the filibuster in 2022. The filibuster allows the minority party to block most legislation unless 60 senators vote to move forward on a bill, a maneuver known as invoking cloture.
“Schumer wasn’t interested in debate or persuasion. He wanted a spectacle. He wanted a vote he could weaponize, a moment he could broadcast to the radical left to prove his loyalty,” Manchin wrote. “This wasn’t about governing or principle. It was about power.”
Manchin also criticizes DEI in the book. “When the party pushes hard on woke ideology, DEI mandates, and other social agendas, it creates unnecessary divisions, alienates everyday citizens, and moves us further away from the commonsense middle ground where most Americans actually live their lives,” he writes.
Elsewhere, he argues that Democrats have “increasingly shifted toward ideological purity tests” instead of welcoming “diverse perspectives,” which he claims the party once did.
He also claims that he does not change his political views just because of outside pressure. “My principles don’t swing with the political winds,” he wrote, according to the New York Times. “I am pretty simple in my views. I’m fiscally responsible and socially compassionate.”
But while the book contains plenty of material for conservatives to gloat over, it shouldn’t be forgotten that this is nothing new from Manchin, who clearly still has political aspirations. Amid all the self-aggrandizing, Manchin conveniently leaves out that he was a reliable vote for Democrats on all but a few votes, including on legislation that directly contradicted the best interests of his constituents and far-left Biden administration appointees.
For instance, Manchin voted to confirm key Biden appointees at the Department of the Interior and the Department of Energy – two agencies that were weaponized against West Virginia’s all-important coal industry during Biden’s term.
As Paul Waldman writes for MSNBC of Manchin, “his I’m-just-a-small-town-West-Virginia-boy act conceals an ambitious politician who was skilled at maximizing his own influence.”
“In fairness, Manchin stayed a mostly-loyal Democrat to the end, even after he officially changed his registration to Independent in 2024,” Waldman continues. “He voted to confirm the vast majority of Joe Biden’s judicial and executive branch nominees, he signed on to most of Biden’s signature bills in the end and he secured his share of federal funding for his constituents, all of which is to his credit.”
Moreover, while Manchin now criticizes his own party for its embrace of DEI, he was perfectly content using it as a primary reason to support Biden’s Interior Secretary nominee Deb Haaland. “230 years after George Washington assembled his first Cabinet, it is long past time to have a Native American woman at the table,” Manchin said in 2021, explaining his vote to confirm.
Haaland would go on to carry out Biden’s destructive and costly war on oil and gas, which included shutting off 41 million acres of federal lands for energy exploration, according to the Washington Free Beacon. Her “diverse” identity as a Native American woman also played into her decision to block seven oil and gas leases in the Arctic Ocean based on “Indigenous knowledge.” West Virginians and all Americans paid for these actions at the gas pump and in higher energy costs across the board.
On another major issue of the day, abortion, Manchin also threw himself directly into the “political winds.”
While proclaiming himself “pro-life,” he could never quite decide if taxpayers should subsidize Planned Parenthood, the nation’s largest abortion vendor. As detailed by Axios in 2017, Manchin walked a “tightrope on Planned Parenthood.” This included flip-flopping on whether to defund Planned Parenthood.
Even during his final years in the Senate, Manchin was still trying to say he was “pro-life” while criticizing the Dobbs v. Jackson 2022 Supreme Court decision that returned the issue of abortion to legislators and the people. Even though constitutional scholars on the left and the right agreed that the Supreme Court had no constitutional authority to set limits on the states’ ability to regulate abortion, Manchin wrote that he was “deeply disappointed” by the Dobbs decision.
By 2024, Manchin was backing the radical “Reproductive Freedom for All Act” that would have effectively prohibited any meaningful pro-life protections for unborn babies.
He has also walked back his opposition to Obamacare. In 2010, when patriotic Tea Party members correctly opposed the massive overreach into the health care system, then-Governor Manchin echoed similar opposition. Now, years later, when it’s become entrenched in our welfare system, he is supportive, even voting to extend costly Obamacare subsidies.
The gentleman from West Virginia may paint himself as a centrist maverick in “Dead Center,” but his record tells a different story.
Despite his rhetoric, he consistently aligned with the Democrat Party’s left-wing priorities – backing DEI, supporting the killing of unborn babies, and embracing Obamacare. Americans should see through this carefully crafted facade.
Matt Lamb is a contributor for AMAC Newsline and an associate editor for The College Fix. He previously worked for Students for Life of America, Students for Life Action, and Turning Point USA. He previously interned for Open the Books. His writing has also appeared in the Washington Examiner, The Federalist, LifeSiteNews, Human Life Review, Headline USA, and other outlets. The opinions expressed are his own. Follow him @mattlamb22 on X.
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