It should be said that Biden didn’t really ask Congress to expedite the bipartisan infrastructure bill ahead of the reconciliation package. Andrew Bates, a White House spokesman, told NBC News that Biden “knew he wanted both bills on his desk and was looking forward to signing each one.”
The nine MPs in question are also out of step with their districts, where the most likely voters support the budget adjustment package without much reservation, according to a recent poll by left-wing company Data for Progress.
The facts of the situation aside, it is just baffling the mind to see another group of conservative and moderate Democrats convince themselves that if, as Democrats, they undermine the Democratic President, they will not obey the laws of politics and will prevail.
We have long passed the age of split-ticket voting. If voters turn against Biden, they will also turn against the Democrats in Congress. As hard as they try, these democratic skeptics will find it difficult to distance themselves from their party and leadership. If past elections are evidence of this, they will fail.
The only thing that could possibly boost their prospects is the president’s popularity, which in part depends on his success. For Conservative Democrats, defining a goal of its own is to bring Biden a major legislative defeat – which could happen if the House abandons its two-pronged process – provided they hope to stay in office. We saw precisely this dynamic in 2009 and 2010, when moderate and conservative calls by the Democrats to reduce the Affordable Care Act did little to contain voter anger but produced a less generous bill that took more years than necessary, to pay off his achievements (and consequently diminished). its political utility).
But that just brings us back to the beginning. The Democrats are likely to lose the house. You could easily lose the Senate. This could be the last democratic “trifecta” for another 10 years or more, considering that there are partisan Gerrymanders in one chamber and the structural advantage of the Republican Party in the other. So the best game is to give your all: stop the games and pass as much of Biden’s agenda as possible; to do what they can to improve the playing field in elections and combat voter suppression in the States; and the structural reforms (e.g. DC statehood) that could bring American democracy a little closer to “one person, one vote”.
The point of gaining power is not to remain in power; it is to use it. And if you use it well, if you do what you are told you can actually keep it.