Sen Manchin Is The De Facto Interim Legislative Leader

It seems to me that the key takeaway from last night's legislative maneuvering is that the winner was Sen Manchin, who succeedced in using Tuesday's election outcomes to nudge Speaker Pelosi off the position she articulated on Wednesday that the outcome would not change her legislative agenda, which was presumably to link the BIF with the BBB and pass both at the same time. By Friday, it had become plain that this would be impossible, and the House leadetship was forced to cobble up a last-minute Plan B, which amounted to passing the BIF first with Republican support -- a Manchin prescription -- while deferring action on the BBB, eventually to go to the Senate, where Manchin's agenda will also prevail.

Speaker Pelosi used up a great deal of time, energy, and political capital allowing the House progressives to wag the dog on the legislative agenda, but accomplished nothing. As Matt Lewis put it on Yahoo News,

After a long on-again, off-again back-and-forth standoff over whether they would muster the votes to pass President Biden’s bipartisan infrastructure bill, progressives finally folded like a cheap suit late Friday night and passed it, in exchange for almost nothing.

Consider how progressives’ demands have shifted these last few months. They went from saying they would pass a bipartisan infrastructure bill only after the Senate passed a $3.5 trillion social spending bill to passing that bill in exchange only for an agreement for a House bill on a half-sized $1.75 trillion package if the Congressional Budget Office agrees it would pay for itself and knowing that there’s little chance even if that happens that it will make it through the Senate intact.

Progressives and Nancy Pelosi can dress this up however they like. But the trade House Democrats made was passing a mainstream, popular bill that will become law, in exchange for some progress on a sprawling progressive bill that won’t—at least not anytime soon and certainly not without major overhauls.

. . . The corollary to progressives folding is Joe Manchin winning. That’s the other headline, based on the likelihood that infrastructure week has finally arrived, after all this time. Despite all the criticism and harassment and pressure, he never budged.

Clearly a Democrat, Lewis offfers additional insight from that perspective:

It’s baffling to me why progressives ended up holding out just long enough to help torpedo Democrats’ chances in the Virginia governor’s race—and then acceded to this vote just days later. My only theory is that they feared being blamed for the loss (which explains why Jayapal started signaling the decision to back down on Monday), but couldn’t get the votes in before Friday.

At minimum, it sounds like this is the end of the Götterdämmerung strategy. On Thursday, my view was that it was unchanged, for now, but this suggests I was already thinking it was on shaky ground. But this transcript of Speaker Pelosi's weekly press comference Thursday illustrates her current state of mind and the extent of the bigger problem:

So, we are getting some Byrd and privilege. I think mostly we're getting privilege scrub because privilege scrub is deadly to a bill. Byrd? Well, it's important. You have to take it out, but a privilege violation can take you out. So, we're, again, getting that as we go along as well. But when we pass a bill, then they will see it in its aggregate and make some –

Q: Any concerns that any of this is, quote, ‘messaging’ because they have to take some of those things out regardless, no matter what you send over? And you said you weren't going to send a messaging bill.

Speaker Pelosi. No, no. We're not sending a messaging bill. But we want to be sure that what we send is not Byrd-able or Byrd bath or privilege scrub. They're the two exercises in case – bathing exercises we're engaged in, and we're getting a good response.

Stein's Law: That which cannot continue must stop. As someone said, Speaker Pelosi is a highly overrated person. If Sen Manchin is able to step into the vacuum until another adult can take over, so much the better. Something like this needs to happen at the White House, too.