Thread by @whstancil

So I kind of get the sense that a lot of people have lost track of what’s happening with infrastructure, or checked out. That makes sense because it’s really complicated. But right now BAD THINGS MIGHT BE HAPPENING. Here’s my best attempt to explain how.

So you have the two bills:
1. the bipartisan bill (often referred to as BIF for bipartisan infrastructure framework). It was negotiated by moderates.
2. the reconciliation bill, or Build Back Better, which is the rest of Biden’s agenda and all the stuff most people care about.

Here’s the key facts about the bipartisan bill: it was passed by the Senate in the summer, so if the House passes it, it immediately becomes law. Also it contains a bunch of money for WV, so Manchin really seems to want it. It’s nothing special otherwise, though.

The reconciliation bill, by contrast, hasn’t passed the Senate. So even if the House passes it, it still has to get past Manchin and Sinema. And therein lies the dilemma!

What’s been going on for many months is that centrists in the House AND Senate have wanted the House to go ahead and pass the bipartisan bill first, making it law, while the reconciliation bill isn’t finished.

It’s pretty clear why they want this.

It would provide Biden with a (small) PR win, but it would also be great for the centrists. That’s because right now, the main thing keeping some of them from walking away from the larger reconciliation bill altogether seems to be that they’re worried about the bipartisan bill.

If the bipartisan bill becomes law, suddenly those centrists can just “pause,” as Manchin describes it, and not risk anything. Nothing can stop them from doing this! They can blow up the reconciliation bill by walking away, or plausibly make that threat and get huge concessions.

Back in August, everyone recognized this risk. Biden and Pelosi both said that reconciliation would have to go first. But gradually they both lost their nerve. There’s a sense they need to pass something, anything, and the bipartisan bill is ready to go.

I want to be clear that no one ever really explained why their position on this changed. The rationales given were usually something “The time has come,” but of course the underlying strategic dilemma is unchanged, so it really feels like they just got spooked.

So what happened is that it fell to House progressives to stick to the original strategy and hold up the bipartisan bill. That in turn keeps Manchin and Sinema from walking away from the larger reconciliation law. They’ve managed to do so, outlasting Pelosi’s attempts to pass it.

So what’s happened yesterday is that suddenly the House progressives switched their position and decided to pass the bipartisan bill, giving up their leverage. And it’s really hard to explain why this happened! But it looks really bad, like Manchin and Sinema won a total victory.

It’s clear that Manchin, at least, hasn’t changed his mind about the reconciliation bill. He’s been calling for a “pause” for months and yesterday he was blasting it again. But for some reason House progressives have decided to relinquish their leverage over him anyway.

What’s worse is that nobody can really explain why progressives have given up their blockade. A lot of people are saying they’ve decided to “trust Biden,” but he’s made the same promises all along and never budged Manchin and Sinema. So trust him why?

A bunch of people are calling what progressives are doing a “leap of faith.”

That sounds nice, but in the real world, it’s usually a bad idea to gamble everything you care about on a giant high-risk leap you can’t rationally explain. It’s a phrase to paper over bad decisions.

The more plausible explanations are the worst ones.

Progressives have been under a lot of pressure from centrist Democrats to cave. There’s a sense centrists will blame them if Dems lose Virginia today, arguing (not really plausibly) that if the bipartisan bill has passed, McAuliffe would be more popular. People are panicky.

For weeks now, Pelosi and other Dem leaders have been trying to get these bill through the House, get it off their plate, ignoring the basic strategic dilemma with a sort of glob optimism it’ll all work out, or if it doesn’t, it wasn’t ever meant to be.

Basically, short-termism has taken over the minds of many Democrats: we have to do something, and this is something. The problem is, doing THIS thing undermines their ability to pass the bulk of Biden’s agenda. But gradually wishful thinking has taken hold. “Maybe it’ll be fine!”

So the simplest explanation is that now finally that same wishful thinking has spread to progressives. They too have lost sight of why it’s so important to hold the bipartisan bill as leverage, and are taking a “leap of faith” that suddenly Manchin and Sinema will come aboard.

It’s could work out anyway. No one really knows what Manchin and Sinema want. But the fear - very well-justified! - is that the two people making a lot of bad-faith demands all along are just waiting until the perfect opportunity to kill Build Back Better, or rip its heart out.

A lot of people have spent the last few months saying “Manchin holds all the cards, there’s no leverage over him.” That wasn’t really true: he wanted the bipartisan bill.

But if the House pass the bipartisan bill, it will BECOME true. He’ll be fully unleashed. Be afraid.