Kabuki

Speaker Pelosi worked all weekend to get a deal on the $1.5 trillion infrastuture vote, except it was only Thursday. Why am I skeptical of this whole story? Earlier in the day, Rep Hoyer was pretty sure the big vote wasn't going to happen.

The No. 2 Democrat in the House of Representatives had a one-word answer when reporters asked if he was confident the $1 trillion bill would pass in a vote scheduled later in the day.

"Nope," said Representative Steny Hoyer.

CNN also reported during the day,

A source familiar with the whip operation of the House Progressive Caucus tells CNN that the group just completed a status check with their members and their number of “no” votes remains “solid.”

Rep. Pramila Jayapal, the chair of the caucus, has said repeatedly that at least half of her members were prepared to vote "no" if there wasn’t a guarantee around the wider spending package. That would mean somewhere in the range of 45 to 50 "no" votes.

The source says that most progressives have not even been contacted and asked to switch their vote. They say only two members have been contacted at all, adding the calls did not come from Speaker Nancy Pelosi or Majority Whip Jim Clyburn.

Elsewhere, Clyburn said himself that he hadn't even tried to whip the vote. Whatever negotiations were taking place, they weren't with individual House members. So with whom, if anyone, were Speaker Pelosi and other leaders negotiating? Bernie Sanders emerged from the woodwork during the week:

Sanders, in a series of tweets posted on Tuesday, said the passage of the bipartisan infrastructure bill on Thursday without the reconciliation package would be “in violation of an agreement that was reached within the Democratic Caucus in Congress.”

He also said such a move would “end all leverage that we have to pass a major reconciliation bill.”

And it's hard not to think Sanders had the final word last night:

"It is an absurd way to do business, to be negotiating a multi-trillion-dollar bill a few minutes before a major vote with virtually nobody knowing what's going on. That's unacceptable. And I think what has got to happen is that tonight, the bipartisan infrastructure bill must be defeated," Sanders said.

But of course, the root problem wasn't Sanders, though it's become more clear in recent days that Sanders is an author, if not the principal author, of the $3.5 trillion reconciliation package. The problem is Sen Manchin, who for now holds the cards and is fully aware of it.

Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) is in the driver’s seat and letting liberal Democrats in the House and Senate know that he plans to set the terms for the budget reconciliation bill that they hope to use to enact President Biden’s "Build Back Better" agenda.

. . . By declaring that his top-line limit would be $1.5 trillion — a full $2 trillion less than the number he voted for in the Senate budget resolution last month — Manchin made it clear that the reconciliation bill isn’t passing anytime soon.

I've been wondering for some time who's been pulling the Democrat strings. For a while, I believed it was Speaker Pelosi. The problem is that the events of the past couple of weeks place Pelosi in the position of the tech bosses I used to work for, who promised to work all weekend, didn't deliver, and eventually lost their jobs. Pelosi is a disposable pawn at this point, and I suspect she's now on her way out. Given the tensions of the past week, Sanders's mask is coming off, and he's now the Democrat power -- or that is, he would be if Manchin weren't thwarting him.

At this point, not only is Pelosi on her way out, by January 2023 if not sooner, but both Biden and Schumer are also irrelevant. The contest is between Sanders and Manchin.