It’s time to make a deal

So far, President Biden has taken a very Obama-ish no-drama attitude toward his big spending bill. This is probably smart. Things may look messy now, but he knows that once something gets passed everyone will soon forget the sausage-making that went into it.

Still, surely all the actors in this little drama—Manchin, Sinema, moderates, progressives, activists—understand that they all have a vested interest in the success of the Democratic Party. Like it or not, it's the only game in town, and the longer they keep fighting the more inept and feeble the party looks. There's plenty of time to overcome this, but not an infinite amount of time. And yet, no one seems much interested in getting something out the door now while the next debt ceiling crisis is still a couple of months away.

It's time to do a deal, folks. Obamacare expansion, childcare, family leave, and long-term care should be the top priorities. Those are programs that can be sold as middle-class benefits even though they help everyone, poor and middle class alike. And they're concrete programs, things that are easily understood and that help out with concrete problems that affect a huge chunk of the population.

They're also things that everyone can get behind. Unlike Obamacare, which Democrats largely ran away from in 2010, there's no one who needs to run away from any of these things. They're popular, and they deserve to be popular. If Democrats campaign on them, they'll be associated with the party forever, just like Social Security and Medicare.