Democratic senator Joe Manchin became the latest in his party to point fingers for the disastrous defeat of his party on Tuesday, with the West Virginia lawmaker putting the blame squarely on President Obama.
“There’s an old saying my grandmother would say, people don’t care how much you know, until they know how much you care,” Manchin told Time on Thursday. “And the president is bright and very articulate and speaks very well. People just don’t believe he cares. That’s the disconnect that I’m seeing.”
The conservative Democrat has never been a huge fan of President Obama. He has repeatedly criticized restrictive White House policies on his state’s coal industry, and this summer pushed for a tougher policy against the Islamic State terror group.
And Manchin said he would be even tougher on some of the president’s policies during next year’s Congress, promising to help pass the Keystone Pipeline and raise Obamacare’s eligible workweek from 30 to 40 hours.
“To say now that we’re going to verify 30 hours — we’ll be worse than Europe,” the senator said. “I can’t go to West Virginia and try to sell that crap.”