Former Sen. Joe Manchin wrote in his new memoir that he wanted Republicans to win control of the Senate in 2024 to prevent Democrats from eliminating the filibuster and pursuing what he called “raw political power.” The comments appear in Dead Center: In Defense of Common Sense, a book obtained by Fox News Digital and set for release Tuesday.
Manchin, a former West Virginia Democrat who now identifies as an independent, said he came to believe that a Republican majority offered the best hope for preserving the Senate as an institution. He recalled that he and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema, who also left the Democratic Party to become an independent, bucked then-Senate leadership in 2022 by voting against moves to eliminate the filibuster.
In the memoir, Manchin criticized Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., saying Schumer sought a filibuster vote to “broadcast to the radical left to prove his loyalty” and that the leader’s true priority was holding onto power. “Schumer and the Democrats had already shown their hand — eliminating the filibuster would have been their first order of business,” Manchin wrote. “They had no interest in protecting the Senate’s role as the deliberative body. They only cared about raw political power.”
Manchin said that belief shaped his thinking about the 2024 Senate elections and influenced his unwillingness to back some Democratic figures. He wrote that he would not endorse former Vice President Kamala Harris in a presidential contest because she viewed eliminating the filibuster as the “Holy Grail” necessary to preserve bipartisanship and the broader functioning of American democracy.
Manchin also recounts a confrontational early exchange with President Joe Biden over the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan during the opening months of Biden’s presidency. Manchin said Biden called him, “and was he hot,” and quoted the president as warning, “If you kill this f— bill, I will never speak to you again.” Manchin quoted his own response in the book and said he later regretted “capitulating on the American Rescue Plan” after a compromise produced the bill’s passage.
The memoir also contrasts Manchin’s relationships with recent presidents. He wrote that he had a closer working rapport with former President Donald Trump, calling them fellow “outsiders,” and said he spoke with Trump more in the first two years of Trump’s presidency than he did with President Barack Obama over Obama’s eight years. Manchin said Obama reached out twice during his presidency: after Manchin’s 2012 reelection to the Senate and in 2015 to try to persuade him on the Iran nuclear deal.
Manchin’s account revisits several flash points from his time in the Senate: his 2022 votes that helped preserve the filibuster, his clashes with Democratic leaders, and his broader argument that structural protections such as the filibuster are necessary to prevent one-party rule. He said his preference for a Republican Senate majority stemmed from that institutional concern rather than partisan alignment.
Fox News Digital reported that it reached out to the offices of Schumer, Obama and Biden for comment. The book places Manchin’s criticisms in the context of ongoing debates about Senate rules, partisan strategy and the balance between majoritarian governance and institutional continuity. His narrative also reflects the public record of several high-profile, contentious votes and his unique role as a centrist swing senator during an evenly divided chamber.
Dead Center adds to a series of memoirs by former lawmakers and officials that seek to explain fractious decisions made during the Biden and Trump years. Manchin’s arguments about the filibuster and Senate norms echo a broader debate among lawmakers and scholars over how the upper chamber should balance majority rule with minority protections and how those choices shape governance and policy outcomes.