Manchin: Unwise to block Trump's Supreme Court pick

West Virginia Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin on Monday warned the Democratic Party not to engage in payback when it comes to President-elect Trump's nomination to the Supreme Court or they will continue to lose a significant portion of the electorate in rural states like his who helped hand Trump the presidency.

"We have to be careful how we go down this road," Manchin said during a panel discussion at a centrist "No Labels" conference in Washington.

Manchin was referring to Senate Democrats' willingness to use the filibuster to try to block Trump's high court pick and cautioned against doing so.

"If my Democrat friends just hunker down and say, 'No, no, and hell no'…I can understand that [Republicans] are gong to say, 'Wait a minute, we have a pretty good person here. We need to give him a fair shot,'" he said. "Those types of things, I hope we're going to avoid before we get into this dysfunction that we've been in."

Manchin, a conservative-leaning Democrat who has always played an outsized role in the Republican Senate majority, is under consideration for energy secretary in the Trump administration.