Democrats are justified in their anger towards Manchin and the other gadfly in this unfolding tragedy, Arizona senator Kyrsten Sinema. Both have seemingly been on a mission to sabotage their president's domestic agenda from day one, and neither seem willing to alter their tactics. Given that both will be here until at least 2024, the options for the party are slim to none.
But I keep coming back to my central premise: namely that Democrats have an arithmetic problem on their hands. This inane belief that a narrow majority in the House and a majority in the Senate by virtue of a tie-breaking vote by the vice president somehow translates to a mandate to pass the most aggressive social spending legislation since Medicare was problematic from day one, and it now threatens not only their majority in next year's midterms but quite possibly any hope that Joe Biden has of getting reelected in 2024.
There's plenty of blame to go around here. For starters, party leadership badly misplayed the hand they thought they had going into the negotiations. Instead of assuming they had all 50 senators on board, they should've proceeded as though they had only 48. That would've allowed them to craft the social safety net bill in the same manner they crafted the infrastructure bill: incrementally building out from an initial, smaller frame work. By going as large as they did - $3.5 trillion - they needlessly put themselves in the position where they now have to peel off provisions in the larger bill that Manchin and Sinema don't like, which then alienates progressives whose votes they need in order to pass the infrastructure bill.
Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi did a poor job managing the expectations of their base. Schumer knew for weeks that Manchin's red line was $1.5 trillion. He had a responsibility to communicate that to Pelosi and members of his own caucus. If you know you only have enough money in your budget to do a kitchen remodel, you have no business looking at bath tubs and toilets. None. Schumer needs to stop worrying about a primary challenge from Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and start behaving like a majority leader. As for Pelosi, there was a time when an announcement from her office that she was scheduling a vote meant that a vote was going to take place and, more importantly, that the vote was going to pass. Apparently, not anymore. It is all too clear who is running the House these days and, sadly, it isn't the Speaker.
But the lion's share of the blame must go to Biden himself. As president, he is the official leader of his party and, quite frankly, he has been derelict in his duties. Twice he has visited Capitol Hill and twice he has come away with nothing. Worse, by insisting that both bills need to be linked, he has only encouraged progressives to dig in their heels even more. This enabling has not only cost him in the polls, where he is now in the low 40s, it could cost Democrats the governor's mansion in Virginia, where Terry McAuliffe is ostensibly tied with Trumper Glenn Youngkin going into next Tuesday's election. The significance of this race cannot be overstated. A loss would be a bad omen for Democrats going into 2022.
There are simply no excuses for what's going on here. The Afghanistan pullout was, let's be honest, a clusterfuck. Republican opposition to the vaccine mandates is sad but not totally unexpected given the makeup of that party. Not passing a $1.2 trillion dollar infrastructure bill that is badly needed throughout the country will be unforgivable. Mark my words, voters may not always reward a party for its successes, as we clearly saw in the 2010 midterms after Democrats passed the Affordable Care Act, but they will almost always punish a party for its failures.
And this one, if it happens, will be epic.
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