Anger is peaking among a wide range of Democrats toward Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema over their resistance to President Joe Biden’s economic agenda, but the Democrats’ struggle to pass Biden’s sweeping plan is rooted in more than the personal idiosyncrasies and electoral calculations of two individual senators. It […] Read more »
Washington and the expectation gap
Democratic lawmakers were scrambling this week to salvage support in the Senate for President Joe Biden’s social and environmental agenda, while also maintaining support for a companion infrastructure bill in the House. Correspondent John Dickerson discusses the drama of a political showdown that the majority-party Democrats are having with themselves. […] Read more »
Trauma and Trump make Asian American voters a more cohesive bloc, new poll reveals
In 2020, amid a year of violence and fear, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders were hypervisible – and that changed the way they look at themselves and politics, according to a new POLITICO/Morning Consult poll. As the global pandemic took hold, then-President Donald Trump started using xenophobic terms to blame […] Read more »
Why Kyrsten Sinema’s tactics may backfire
Democratic hopes for passing big legislation through the Senate rely on Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona. Both have made things difficult for Senate Democrats because they are moderates who have been hesitant to pass big spending packages. But while Democrats are lucky to have a […] Read more »
What will it take for Biden to bring fractured Democrats together?
… There are now many cooks in the kitchen as Democrats seek consensus and compromise between the $3.5 trillion proposed and a $1.5 trillion ceiling Manchin is calling for. Ultimately, however, this is Biden’s agenda and the political judgments will fall most heavily on him, while the rest of his […] Read more »
Biden Throws In With Left, Leaving His Agenda in Doubt
For well over a year now, President Biden’s vaunted negotiating style largely boiled down to this: I’m with you. After he vanquished Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont in the Democratic primary, he brought the liberal icon’s ardent supporters into the fold by embracing much of the senator’s platform even as […] Read more »