Hey Rudy! You lefty turd, "The demise of BBB comes at a dark moment for Democrats"

How's that headline grab ya?

“The president requested more time to continue his negotiations, 
and so we will keep working with him, hand in hand, to bring 
this bill over the finish line and deliver on these much-needed 
provisions,” Senate Majority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) 
declared on Friday.

Translated, this means: “I don’t have the votes for Build Back 
Better.”

Sen. Joe Manchin III (D-W.Va.) was not the Grinch who stole BBB. 
That would be the Congressional Budget Office, which cast a 
skeptical eye on the Democrats accounting. Assists go to the 
consumer price index and the producers price index, both of 
which recently hit highs not seen in decades, and to the Federal 
Reserve, clearly spooked by those numbers. A perfect storm of 
common sense, accountants and economists sunk BBB, which would 
have been gasoline on inflation’s already burning fire.

Will a social spending bonanza be refloated in the new year? 
Count on it. Far too many promises have been made to progressive 
groups whose help Democrats will need to avoid an almost certain 
wipeout in the 2022 midterm elections. House Speaker Nancy 
Pelosi (D-Calif.) hates to lose. Yet she continues to ask 
moderate Democrats to vote on unpopular measures, and then the 
party is surprised when it gets clobbered, as it did in 2010, 
when the Blue Team lost 63 seats. Promising much and delivering 
little doesn’t make for majorities.

Manchin spoke clearly enough, saying often in effect “I will 
support close to another $2 trillion in one-time spending. So, 
what do you want?” Progressives wouldn’t take that “yes” for an 
answer. Other Senate Democrats were said to be standing behind 
him and happy to have him take the heat so they did not have to 
cast a vote that opponents would say powered double-digit 
inflation in the summer and fall.

I’ve spent weeks detailing parts of the House’s version of BBB, 
an absurd, Frankenstein monster of a bill. The waste and 
featherbedding and gimmicks grew and grew — as did the price tag 
— even as Democrats insisted it never crossed $2 trillion. 
Manchin wasn’t having any of it.

Who looks smart? Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) 
months ago advised his colleagues to pass an infrastructure bill 
of one-time spending on roads and bridges that made sense in 
many places. McConnell’s strategy was to carve out just enough 
spending for Manchin to support so he could withstand a barrage 
of assaults from the left. (It helped that Manchin does not 
appear to care what blue-state politicians or Twitter socialists 
say about him.)

Schumer did not have to fumble this ball. He could have been far 
more vocal about drawing the line at $1.5 trillion or below. 
It’s the oldest rule in politics: Take what you can get. Schumer 
misfired this time. Perhaps he won’t in the New Year.

Applause for McConnell, meanwhile, and a bell tolling for 
President Biden. Since the fiasco in Afghanistan this summer 
that permanently scarred his presidency, error has piled on 
error and, now, another wave of covid-19 is sweeping the 
country. British Prime Minister Boris Johnson just got his head 
handed to him in a by-election last week in which the Tories 
lost a seat the party had held for nearly 200 years. Johnson is 
a conservative and Biden is a liberal but both sit atop rumbling 
volcanoes. Neither man seems to have a plan.

Elsewhere, it looks as though Russian President Vladimir Putin 
will invade Ukraine again — he did so the first time while 
Barack Obama was commander in chief. The Chinese pointedly cut 
the climate summit. The United Arab Emirates put a hold on 
buying our F-35s and drones while the revived Iran nuclear talks 
go sideways.

It’s a dark winter, and not just for those being stalked by 
covid. Biden, like Obama before him, had a chance to stake a 
claim the political center. He’s failed. His “unifier” agenda is 
on the shelf. Don’t expect it to get dusted off in 2022.

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/12/19/bbb-biden-
democrats-in-disarray/