Joe Manchin on the Fight for America's Future: Term Limits, Bipartisanship & the 2028 Election

If the United States continues on its current path of growing, unmanaged national debt, the country will eventually experience a serious national decline or crisis ("take us down" / "fold"), and U.S. political leaders will be forced into increasingly cowardly or poor decisions as a direct consequence of servicing that debt.

“the debt of the nation will take us down. We will fold because the debt we have, and it's going to be unmanaged debt, which will make us lead us to make cowardly decisions.”

If the Democratic Party does not moderate and move away from what Joe Manchin characterizes as its far‑left ideological stance, the party will lose future elections ("go down in defeat").

“and I think a lot of Democrats believe like I do, but they've gone so far to the left they can't retreat. And if they don't get out of their way, they're going to go down in defeat.”