Tough couple of days for the once and future governor senator. His party lost control of the Senate in Tuesday night’s election and, well, it’s apparent he still follows WVU football closely, hence the seamless comparison between the two.

Using a sports metaphor, Manchin said Senate Democrats have been acting in recent years like the West Virginia University Mountaineers football team did last Saturday: “We had the lead the whole entire game up until the middle of the 4th quarter and they decided to sit on the ball. And guess what? We got beat 31 to 30.”