Josiah Bartlet he ain’t
Joe goes groveling
ON Thursday night, Nancy Pelosi had to stall a House vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill because, just like the border agents in Del Rio, she didn’t whip anyone.
The progressives in her caucus, including the Squad, wouldn’t budge on their “no” votes. So on Friday, the speaker brought out the big guns in the form of the big guy. That’s right. Joe Biden went to the Capitol to get things straightened out.
Earlier in the week, White House press secretary Jen Psaki compared the tense negotiations on the Hill to the TV show “The West Wing.” Maybe that is where the idea for the visit came from. In one episode, fictional President Jed Bartlet goes to Congress to negotiate with Republicans and keep the government open. Along the way, he dramatically stops the car and walks to the Hill. Through the sheer symbolic power of the presidency, he bends legislators to his will.
This week’s episode is a bit more shambolic. For one thing, Biden isn’t heading to the Capitol to wrangle GOP votes — he is groveling for votes from his own party, which, for those keeping track, controls both houses of Congress. This doesn’t look heroic, it’s desperate.
Things are so bad that Psaki on Friday bemoaned that “we haven’t seen any real courage from the Republican side of the House,” as if the GOP has some responsibility to save Biden’s agenda.
But it gets worse for the president, because if House lefties are the hard place, then Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema are the rocks. Manchin is being his kind, grandfatherly self while sticking to his $1.5 trillion cap on reconciliation, instead of the $3.5 trillion progressives want. Sinema has been to the White House so often this week that they know her coffee order by heart, but to no avail.
At the end of the day, Democrats will probably pass something, even if it is a fraction of the generational, transformative, FDR-worthy leviathan of a bill they wanted. Then, as with the Afghanistan withdrawal, they will claim that this was planned for, this was expected. But you can’t do a victory lap in a Pinto when you promised the crowd a Porsche.
What has become painfully obvious is that Biden can no more control the Democratic caucus than he can the border or inflation. His incredible shrinking
presidency continues to contract. Nobody in Congress will be awed by his presidential presence on the Hill. But maybe, just maybe, they will take pity on an old man who is badly in over his head.