Did Democrats get the message last week?

JOE Biden’s presidency, to date, has been a failure. The real question is whether it is too late. For cranberry sauce for Thanksgiving (they say the price will be 50 percent higher if you buy your cranberries in preciously scarce cans).

For sleds for Christmas. For the country’s confidence.

How is it that a truck driver beat the president of the New Jersey State Senate?

It’s hard to escape the conclusion that Sen. Joe Manchin reached, when he announced that the country (as opposed to the Democrats in the House) is somewhere to the right of the center on the ideological spectrum. That is certainly where Virginia was last week. It is, even, where New Jersey was.

And if that is where two Biden states were last Tuesday, where will they be next year on Tuesday? Or three years from now?

Will the progressives in Pelosi-land accept the verdict?

Certainly not. The way Congress works these days, most seats are safely Democratic or safely Republican. Moderates of any stripe are an endangered species.

What is wrong with my party?

But I shouldn’t complain. They actually want to give me a tax cut. ME? Why in the world would anyone want to give high earners like me a tax cut? A hundred dollars to fill up the tank and you want to give lawyers a tax cut?

It’s true. The billionaire’s tax might be off the table, but a tax cut for high earners in high-tax states? Exactly what we need to fix the supply chain.

The last administration put a $10,000 limit on how much individuals could deduct for state and local taxes on their federal returns. The thing is, billionaires don’t actually “earn” billions or even millions a year; they collect it. Professionals such as me — lawyers, doctors, accountants and consultants, who live in high-tax states such as New York and, yes, home sweet home California — pay taxes on every dollar we earn to the state and the city. More than $10,000 a year.

So my friends the Democrats want to get rid of the $10,000 cap so folks who report six or seven figures a year in earned income can deduct more of it from their federal taxes.

Tax cuts are just a different kind of government expenditure. The taxes the government doesn’t collect as a result are what is called “tax expenditures.”

So why, at a time when working families are struggling to pay for food and gas, would anyone be proposing a major spending program for high-earning professionals and executives in hightax states?

It can’t have anything to do with the fact that the leaders — of the House (Nancy Pelosi) and the Senate (Chuck Schumer) — come from New York and California, respectively, or that huge percentages of political donors in those states are the ones who would benefit?

So is it just that they are utterly tone-deaf to what is going on every day in supermarkets, gas stations and even takeout taco joints?

Could it be that they just don’t “get it” and that no one has the guts to tell them? The voters tried last week. If the tax-cut proposal is any guide, it may well be too late.

Susan Estrich is a USC law professor, former Fox News analyst and Democratic political activist.