Just In Time For Halloween

I followed the deveopments in the BIF-Framework Democrat crisis in the House all day yesterday, but I found conservative media, aggregators, and blogs remarkably absent. The Hill, Politico, and NPR were, however, on the case, at least as far as individual developments were concerned. As of yesterday's post, things had just begun not to happen.

The problem was that on Wednesday, Speaker Pelosi had been unable to deliver on a House vote passing the bipartisan infrastructure bill. As a result, Thursday was represented as a last-ditch effort to pass it, either to give President Biden some sort of trophy to take to Glasgow, to give the party prestige going into the November 2 elections, or not to embarrass the president, or for the sake of his entire presidency. According to Politico,

President Joe Biden left Thursday for his second trip abroad with his massive domestic agenda -- and, by his own admission, his entire presidency -- hanging in the balance on Capitol Hill.

. . . "When the President gets off that plane, we want him to have a vote of confidence from this Congress," House Speaker Nancy Pelosi told fellow Democrats in the meeting, stressing she wanted a vote on a bipartisan infrastructure package by the end of the day -- and imploring her her members "don't embarrass" Biden by voting down the package as he heads overseas.

According to The Hill,

In an exceptional interaction Thursday, Pelosi walked into a strategic meeting of the [Congressional Progressive Caucus], only to leave a short time later without speaking to the group.

[CPC Chair] Jayapal emerged not long afterwards to explain the group’s position. With a number of issues still unresolved in the social spending bill — and parts of the text yet to be written — Jayapal said liberals are sticking with their initial strategy, even if it means bucking leadership to delay the vote on the bipartisan infrastructure framework, often referred to as the BIF, until next week.

“There are ... too many 'no' votes for the BIF to pass today. However, we are committed to staying here until we get this Build Back Better Act done, get the legislative text,” Jayapal said after huddling in the basement of the Capitol with other members of the CPC.

Nevertheless, Pelosi waited intil very late in the day to delay the vote. Politico summed up,

THERE’S ALSO THIS LITTLE PROBLEM: BIDEN DIDN’T SELL IT. This entire episode looks similar to what happened in late September, when House Democratic leaders hoped Biden would come to the Hill and say to progressives: Vote for this damn BIF, and vote for it now.

But once again, he didn’t. And progressives picked up on that.

“He did not ask for a vote on the BIF today,” Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair PRAMILA JAYAPAL (D-Wash.) said right after the meeting. “The speaker did, but he did not. He said he wants votes on both bills."

The Hill summed up this morning:

Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) early Thursday evening delayed a vote on a separate $1 trillion infrastructure measure, despite having pushed hard to pass the measure earlier in the day.

The delay — the second postponement for the bill — was a rare exhibition of weakness from the Speaker, who prides herself on both her vote-counting abilities and her capacity to sway recalcitrant members of her caucus.

Wait a moment. "Rare exhibition of weakness"? She hasn't been able to get anything done since summer. The consensus is that the past week is just a replay of the end of September, when she had to delay precisely the same vote, calling on precisely the same Capitol visit from Biden, with precisely the same holdouts, despite weeks of precisely the same optimism on the Sunday talks. The establshment media is now saying she can maybe fix this somehow and try again next week. In other words, yet another do-or-die, last-ditch effort.

Except that with the "framework" for the BBB now in writing and key programs left out, it's Sen Sanders who's threatening to withdraw his Senate vote on the BBB. What's emerged this week is that neither Speaker Pelosi nor President Biden turns out to be capable of unifying the Democrats and delivering on promises. Meanwhile, they're wasting time and energy trying more do-overs, when it's increasingly plain that neither Pelosi nor Biden has the credibility to push the program forward.

What was that about doing the same thing over and over while expecting a different result?