Who's Pulling The Strings?

It's been pretty much conventonal wisdom that President Biden is a puppet, and someone else is pulling the strings. Over the past couple of weeks, I've become convinced it's Cruella De Vil, better known as Speaker Pelosi. What clinched it was the report fromm Bob Woodward's new book, Peril. According to the New York Post,

A transcript of a call [between Gen Mark Milley and Speaker] Pelosi two days after the Jan. 6 Capitol riot, obtained by the “Peril” authors, has her ranting at Milley about Trump’s access to nuclear weapons.

“If they couldn’t even stop him from an assault on the Capitol, who even knows what else he may do? And is there anybody in charge at the White House who was doing anything but kissing his fat butt all over this? …

“He’s crazy. You know he’s crazy. He’s been crazy for a long time. So don’t say you don’t know what his state of mind is.”

Milley reportedly responded: “Madam Speaker. I agree with you on everything.”

The Army, of course, reports to the president as commander in chief, not to the House speaker. The call suggests, though, that Pelosi was giving Milley implicit orders, which included disregarding the authority of the president and defense secretary on the basis that the president was crazy, and the defense secretary was presumably kissing the president's butt. Under at least some circumstances, this would be cause for removal and potentially court martial.

But this also suggests Speaker Pelosi's view of her implicit authority, especially with a man of weak character now in the White House. The difficulty is that the Speaker's actual authority extends only so far, and even if Biden is in her pocket, the Senate is effectively tied, Sen Manchin is less easily bullied, and Manchin's own leader, Sen Schumer, has been keeping a very low profile.

The leverage Manchin has, which nobody has mentioned, is that senators can switch parties. In 2001, Sen James Jeffords, a Republican, became an independent and caucused with the Democrats, which switched the balance of power in the Senate. Cleary the potential exists for Manchin to do the same, which would halt the entire Democrat legislative agenda. Biden, in the Senate in 2001, must clearly be aware of this. Bullying Manchin is not an option.

Thus we see in Axios,

President Biden failed to persuade Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) to agree to spending $3.5 trillion on the Democrats' budget reconciliation package during their Oval Office meeting on Wednesday, people familiar with the matter tell Axios.

Defying a president from his own party — face-to-face — is the strongest indication yet Manchin is serious about cutting specific programs and limiting the price tag of any potential bill to $1.5 trillion. His insistence could blow up the deal for progressives and others.

The problem for Cruella Speaker Pelosi is that she needs the support of the far-left faction of House Democrats for the full reconciliation package, and their position is currently that any reductions are non-negotiable. For Manchin to insist on substantial reductions in the package endangers its support in the House. He's effectively giving Biden, which is to say Pelosi, two bad options: get a partial infrastructure bill, requiring Pelosi to work out a compromise with the leftists, or see Manchin defect to the Republicans and lose everything.

One one hand, I'm not sure if Pelosi isn't the one suffering mental decline, because it seems as though her grip on power is loosening, while she's in denial. On the other, there's really too much in it for Manchin to back down. Apparently no amount of behind the scenes baksheesh has been sufficient to get him to do it so far; at minimum, this makes him a very important guy, effectively on a par with the House Speaker. He's not someone you can bully, and he's starting to like it that way.

Cruella is going to have a problem with this. You do not cross this lady.