Manchin might shock Wash­ing­ton with last-minute effort to return

Sen­ate Major­i­ty Leader Chuck Schumer (D‑NY) isn’t giv­ing up on keep­ing Sen. Joe Manchin (D‑WV) in his cham­ber.
Manchin took him­self out of con­tention for high­er office when he bowed out of run­ning for reelec­tion last Novem­ber and reject­ed calls to run for pres­i­dent in Feb­ru­ary. But Schumer recent­ly float­ed a long-shot pro­pos­al of the cen­trist sen­a­tor run­ning as an inde­pen­dent in West Virginia’s Sen­ate race, cut­ting off a prime seat that would help Repub­li­cans regain con­trol of the cham­ber.
“I think that’s a long, long, long-shot sce­nario,” Manchin told CNN about run­ning as an inde­pen­dent can­di­date. “So I don’t antic­i­pate that hap­pen­ing. I don’t antic­i­pate run­ning.”
When pressed whether the door was entire­ly closed before the sum­mer fil­ing dead­line, Manchin said, “I don’t know if any­thing in W …