Thursday, I'll be tuned to C-Span, since Speaker Pelosi's latest plan is to then hold a floor vote on the $1 trillion infrastructure bill after all. (Her official reasoning is that transportation funding ends that day, the fiscal year's last).
The House vote is a gamble, although it's not. Pelosi doesn't gamble on "maybe" outcomes; she'll pull the bill before any Democratic implosion.
Publicly, however, threatening a vote was a risk taken, seeing how most House progressives are still adamant about their opposition to passing infrastructure in the absence of a reconciliation package. More adamant than ever, or so they're saying.
"Absolutely not," said Rep. Ilhan Omar. "A deal is a deal. We are not passing anything short of having the full Build Back Better agenda." (Note "full" BBB agenda.) Said Rep. Ro Khanna: "Let’s be clear: there’s no passing the infrastructure bill without passing the Build Back Better Act." Rep. Rashida Tlaib: "We will hold the line and vote it down."
What's more, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, Pramila Jayapal, still insists that the Senate, too, must sign off on an acceptable reconciliation deal before her members support infrastructure's passage.
(Lest we chortle at those unrealistic odds as some sort of unique, progressive delusion, consider what Politico reported yesterday about some moderate Democrats: "[They] remained confident that enough Republicans would support the infrastructure bill to allow it to clear the House." Sure. And I'll take the old nag in the sixth, to win.)
Pelosi is having none of Jayapal's Senate demand. Circumstances have changed, hence the approach to progress must change, which is the essence of pragmatic politics, which is the essence of Nancy Pelosi. "We are not going to pass a bill that won’t pass the Senate," she instructed her caucus Monday; and it's no longer feasible to argue that "until the Senate passed the bill, we can’t do [infrastructure]."
As for the reconciliation bill's careeningly downward spending? It strikes me as nothing short of political malpractice, not only by the Senate's infamous, quasi-Democratic duo of Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, but by the noted scattering of recalcitrant House moderates. So far they are forfeiting their right to the title of United States representative, as they seek instead another mere two years of a government paycheck, the country at large be damned. Faust would be proud.
Meanwhile, Manchin continues to distort the political basics at hand. Referring to progressives' infrastructure-reconciliation linkage, he said "I don’t do really good on threats." They aren't threats, Senator. They're President Biden's campaign promises, which you have almost single-handedly reduced to ashes.
That said, another act of political malpractice would be tanking infrastructure because of reconciliation's doom, if doomed it is. To permit America's literal disintegration because of reconciliation's failure would be inexcusable. It is here we see the party's potential, bifactional recklessness.
The truly weird aspect of a few moderates' dissatisfaction with reconciliation's amorphous price tag is that they can't, or won't, specify an alternative number. President Biden, Speaker Pelosi, House progressives and reasonable moderates are negotiating with a kind of phantom displeasure. It's akin to a husband trying to pacify his wife over some wrongful act he's entirely unaware of.
Still, I shall end on an upbeat, hopeful note — at least on the House side of things — which I'm borrowing from my old hometown's representative, Kansas City, Missouri's Emanuel Cleaver: "I think we’re going to do everything Nancy Pelosi said we’re going to do. That’s usually the way things turn out. It’s not pretty, it’s not gonna be easy, but what I know is that there’s not a single Democrat who will walk into that room who’s interested in sacking our quarterback."
I'll add only what I noted the other day. Would you want Speaker Pelosi as your enemy?