Opinion | Joe Manchin Likes Kamala Harris. Here’s How He Sees Her Winning.

“I didn’t like being a senator,” Joe Manchin told me last week — quite the statement from arguably the most influential senator of the Joe Biden-Kamala Harris era. But he’s also been the most divisive member of the Senate Democratic caucus: too conservative for the left on party priorities like abortion, climate change and voting rights and too unyielding on the filibuster. Now he’s had enough. He left the party in May to become an independent, and he’s leaving the Senate in January.

But he’s not done trying to make a case that the path to victory in November and beyond runs through the nation’s political center. And he has high hopes for Harris, the Democrats’ new nominee — indeed, more insights and words of praise about her than I expected.

Just days before the Democratic convention in Chicago, the West Virginia senator and I sat down for a Zoom chat about his assessment of his former party and the Republicans, the path he sees for Ms. Harris, his flirtation with a third-party presidential run, how he sees bipartisanship today and the sort of cross-aisle relationship building he seeks to foster on Almost Heaven, the houseboat he keeps in Washington. Our conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

Michelle Cottle: As Democrats gather for their convention, I’m curious about how you see the party today and if you are any more or less certain about your decision to leave and become an independent.

Joe Manchin: Yeah, well, I’ve been independent all my life, but I’ve never looked at party politics as “I had to pick a side, and the other side was my enemy.” That’s how I was raised in a little coal-mining town of Farmington, Michelle, and I never heard anybody speak ill of the other side. I never thought being a Democrat defined me. I think I just knew I was always an independent. I have always considered myself fiscally responsible and socially compassionate, where I think most Americans are.

Then I went to the Senate, and I’ll never forget it: It had to be early 2011, and there was a vote that Harry Reid came and said, “This is going to be a party-line vote.” Now, mind you, I’ve been involved since 1982, and I never heard the term “party line.” It means everyone, just because you’re on that team, have a D or an R by your name, we got to all vote the same. So I said, “Harry, let me read the bill, and I’ll get back to you.” So I read the bill, and I said, “Harry, on my best day, I can’t sell this crap in West Virginia. That’s on my best day. I can’t sell it.” I said, “So I’m going to vote what I think I can go home and explain.” And, man, he got mad. They put the full-court press on me for a couple of months.