The Democrats Are Close To Going To War With Each Other. What Will Stop Them?

A long-feared war between the Progressive Left and the Moderate Centrists in the Democratic Party is brewing, and it will be up to Senate and House leadership to quell it. Here is what happened:

Yesterday, a cornerstone of President Biden’s economic agenda survived its most crucial test to date, with the bipartisan infrastructure deal championed by Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) garnering 17 GOP Senate votes and all 50 Democratic ones to clear the 60-vote filibuster threshold to begin debate. While many in the GOP grumble that they have not seen the text of the law and plan to offer amendments to it, and while it must still survive another 60-vote test to close debate, the likelihood of passage went up considerably. The White House was elated by this news.

The bill addresses the nation’s “hard” infrastructure needs such as roads, bridges, highway, water supply and broadband (with key provisions garnering widespread, bipartisan support, especially in the areas in the heartland most in need of repair and upgrading), but it does not address what Democrats now include among national “soft” infrastructure: child care, eldercare, climate change, and human capital issues such as immigration. All of that is now in a companion reconciliation bill that is nearly three times the size of the bipartisan infrastructure deal. It’s a gigantic piece of legislation championed by liberal and progressives but derided as too costly and wasteful by conservatives.

The Democrats are about to see their conference tested as never before. With all 50 of them in the Senate needed to push the “soft” bill through the special budget reconciliation process (which can’t be filibustered), they cannot afford a single defection. Already, however, centrist Democrats such as Jon Tester (D-MT), Joe Manchin’s (D-WV) and Kyrsten Sinema (D-AZ) have signaled unease with the spending bill, with Sinema going as far yesterday to say that while she will vote to advance it, she will not support the $3.5 trillion price tag. This threat came despite the amount having been already worked out in the Senate Budget Committee and announced in a compromise between moderates and Senator Bernie Sanders (I-VT) who had pressed for a figure as high as $6 trillion.

Progressives were quick to denounce Sen. Sinema’s brinksmanship, especially members in the House who also will have to sign off on both bills. Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, who is aligned with Senator Sanders on the left, fired off a tweet to her 12.7 million followers, warning “Good luck tanking your own party’s investment on childcare, climate action, and infrastructure while presuming you’ll survive a 3 vote House margin.” In other words, Ocasio-Cortez declared that if Sen. Sinema wants to hold the big spending bill hostage, then progressives in the House will hold her hard-fought infrastructure bill hostage in return. It was a stark reminder to Sen. Sinema that both chambers will need to pass both pieces of legislation concurrently. Other progressives echoed this sentiment. Warned Rep. Mondaire Jones (D-NY), “Without a reconciliation package that meets this moment, I’m a no on this bipartisan deal.”

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi apparently saw this coming long before. Weeks ago, she declared that the infrastructure bill won’t receive a vote by the House unless the Senate also acts on the budget bill through reconciliation. “There ain’t no infrastructure bill without the reconciliation bill,” Pelosi told reporters in June. That means, effectively, that both bills must arrive in a form that satisfies Speaker Pelosi, which in turn means she can leverage progressive protests against a pared-down bill to force Sen. Sinema and others to stay upon the announced course.

Both Sinema and Ocasio-Cortez are relatively new to Congress, and while their threats may feel jarring and unhelpful today, they follow a familiar pattern. Ultimately, Schumer and Pelosi, with the assistance of the White House negotiators, will be acting as mediators between emotional partisans who are determined to defend their turfs and agendas. And that is nothing new at all.

The twist in this case, however, is that there is absolutely no room for error in the Senate and a nearly equally precarious balance in the House. Ironically, this may actually turn out to be what saves both bills. Because any one of the more conservative senators can pull the trigger to blow up the $3.5 trillion budget deal, Schumer and Pelosi apparently decided back in June to also strap dynamite to the infrastructure deal…then effectively handed that trigger to progressives in the House to hold.

This is a truly unusual, dangerous, and fascinating circumstance. It’s best understood as a form of mutually assured destruction—the kind that prevented nuclear war with Russia for seventy-five years. In the coming weeks, we will see if it manages to keep the peace in Congress, tamps down existential threats from the left and the center, and miraculously results in a double win for Democrats and the country. 

If it fails and one side goes nuclear, heaven help the Democrats.