by Monica Showalter
If the reports are true that they still don't have their act together, it's another thing for Republicans to cheer about.
As if the likely victory of Glenn Youngkin in Virginia's gubernatorial race weren't enough of a ray of light, Republicans can also cross their fingers that the Democrats' two gargantuan spending bills in Congress are staying a hopeless mess.
That's the impression from Politico report, which states that Democrats are still fighting among themselves about this wretched matter:
As Biden prepared for the high-stakes meeting with House Democrats on Thursday, [Rep. Pramila] Jayapal made an urgent plea on a call with White House chief of staff Ron Klain: Don’t send the president to pressure liberals to vote Thursday on the Senate’s infrastructure bill without a more progressive social spending bill that’s fully done.
Klain pushed Jayapal, who leads the Congressional Progressive Caucus, to vote for the infrastructure bill during the call, according to a source familiar with their conversation. Jayapal responded that she wanted to avoid sending Biden off to Europe on Thursday with a failed vote, according to multiple Democrats.
What happened next is a dizzying fall of dominos. Biden didn’t directly ask House Democrats to pass his bipartisan infrastructure bill, leaving Pelosi to make the request. Then Jayapal’s progressives dug in against the infrastructure vote that the speaker wanted to tee up — using the president’s lack of a request for cover.
By dinnertime on Thursday, House Democratic leadership’s plans to pass the infrastructure bill had imploded for the second time in a month, an embarrassing defeat as the president was en route to Rome.
Well, good. Biden's trillion-dollar "infrastructure" bill, and his even porkier $1.7 trillion "reconciliation" bill, originally crafted by none other than far-left Sen. Bernie Sanders but since pared-down, might not ever get passed, given Democrats' high-chair behavior.
Politico reports that Klain asked them to vote on the infrastructure bill first, and the House progressives, likely including the crazed squad members, said 'no.' They wanted Joe Biden to ask them to vote on it and since he didn't, they refused to vote at all. Does this sound like toddler stuff? It does to normal people.
We thought they wanted this trash to pass, but it turns out, they will only do it if Joe asks.
And for reasons that aren't entirely clear to us, Joe didn't ask:
As the day wore on, senior Democrats only grew more furious with the White House’s silence. While taking Air Force One to Rome, Biden made only one call House Democrats were briefed on — to Rep. Madeleine Dean (D-Pa.), to tell her he appreciated her CNN appearance talking positively about their agenda. Biden then reiterated that he wasn’t explicitly pushing for the House to pass the infrastructure vote immediately, according to multiple Democrats familiar with that conversation.
Based on that Politico passage, it sounds like he didn't want to ask, he wanted Nancy to ask for him. Although she tried, for the far-leftists, that wasn't good enough.
“It all boils down to the fact that there wasn’t an ask,” [House Majority Leader Steny] Hoyer said, according to a source familiar with the meeting.
Which sounds pretty stupid.
There are all kinds of explanations for this and here are maybe a few:
One, Joe knows the bill, if passed, will be despised by voters. Better to leave Nancy holding the bag than him since she's impervious to criticism.
Two, Joe wants to pull a fast one on the House progressive caucus and vote for just the infrastructure bill to get that much done. He knows the porkulus "reconciliation" will wash out in any voting aftermath, so at least he can snatch out a small victory with the infrastructure bill. Since the progressives know this, they want Joe all over this bill.
Three, Joe's a dotard and 'forgot' to ask for a vote. In his case, it actually could be that.
So now they're fighting among themselves about the Biden bills, which Joe had hoped would pass before his trip to Europe.
It didn't pass, and now all of them have got their eyes on the Virginia gubernatorial election to be held Tuesday, widely seen as a bellwether of Democrat fortunes.
Which is why Pelosi and the other top Democrats are now in a rush to hold a double vote on both bills on Tuesday to get them in under the wire before the election results are announced. For them, it's the last-chance saloon. Expecting a Youngkin victory as they do, they figure they'll have to get more moderate if they want to survive as a party in such an aftermath. That of course, will enrage the squad, but for Democrats, it's always political survival first.
Axios, which tends to be biased toward the left side, reports that Democrats have now cooked up a new solution for this Youngkin-linked dilemma ahead of the vote, and now have it all in the bag:
House Democratic leaders are telling lawmakers they plan to pass both a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill and a $1.75 trillion social spending bill as early as Tuesday, two sources familiar with the conversations tell Axios.
Why it matters: It’s a very ambitious timeline, but leadership is eager to deliver a win to President Biden while he meets with world leaders in Europe.
I imagine the squad will want their porkulus "reconciliation" passed first, given that they don't trust Pelosi to really hold a vote on both bills.
But that may be impossible without passing the baseline infrastructure bill first, given how one follows from the other. So they've got to trust, and maybe they won't trust given the many times Pelosi has pulled a Lucy-holds-the-football with them in the past.
Axios adds a caveat to its all's going swimmingly report:
- The aide emphasized the schedule is “not set in stone yet.”
Which sounds like maybe there are other problems that Democrats need to iron out amongst themselves.
The whole thing suggests continued Democrat disarray despite the brave faces. It comes down to the intransigence of the squad, which cannot understand the concept of political compromise, plus the mismanagement of the Democrat political leaders, including senile Joe.
For us, that's good news and maybe a ray of light on the horizon. If these godawful bills go down in flames as Youngkin rises in Virginia, it couldn't be better news for Republicans and all freedom lovers who want this bill to die.
To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.
Monica Showalter
Source: https://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2021/10/highchair_wars_democrats_still_fighting_amongst_themselves_about_their_porkulus_bills.html
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