Tipsheet

Spin Cycle: Dems Try to Explain Biden’s Latest Failure

Spencer Brown
Spencer Brown  |  October 01, 2021 4:45 PM

After President Biden and Nancy Pelosi failed to get enough support to guarantee passage of the infrastructure bill Thursday night — meaning the vote Speaker Pelosi insisted would take place never happened — those who suddenly had egg on their face employed some serious spin to portray the latest failure for the Biden agenda in a positive light. 

Even before her failure to vote on the package Thursday night was fully realized, Democrats were insisting their "master negotiator" had the will and the skill to get the job done and deliver some modicum of an achievement for President Biden to tout amid multiple failures. 

David Axelrod claimed that he'd "seen this movie before" on Thursday evening as the infighting between Democrats dragged on, adding "if there is [a] path, she'll find it" and "if there is not, she'll plow one."

Ultimately, though, she did not apparently have enough skill or will or path-plowing ability and Pelosi left the Capitol shortly after midnight early Friday morning without bringing the bill to the floor for a vote. 

By the time the sun came up on Friday, still without a clear pathway forward, Rob Reiner claimed that Pelosi "will land this plane," despite her negotiations apparently already running headlong into the Congressional Progressive Caucus helmed by Rep. Pramila Jayapal (D-WA). 

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Stephanie Ruhle claimed that Pelosi and Biden failing to lock up enough support on Thursday as planned is "not" a "major setback," despite the obvious scrambling being done by the White House and Democrat leaders in Congress. 

Dan Pfeiffer unconvincingly disagreed with The New York Times' characterization that Thursday's failure was a "humiliating setback" and instead insisted "that the trajectory is positive" for the infrastructure bill's passage.

Jonathan Chait said that his "read" (yeah, ok) was that "the last 24 hours" in which Pelosi insisted the $1.2 trillion bill would be passed Thursday before pulling the bill and going home "was positive, not negative."

And White House Chief of Staff Ron Klain made the case that all the chaos surrounding Pelosi and Biden's failure on Thursday was "actually all about" "a historic effort to deliver dignity for working people." 

In Friday's White House press briefing, Jen Psaki borrowed some rhetoric from President Biden's assurances about Afghanistan to say it "wasn't inevitable" that Congress would fail to meet Speaker Pelosi's Thursday deadline for a vote on infrastructure. "Self-imposed deadlines sometimes can help crystallize for people and help you make progress," Psaki continued, adding "we think it did exactly that."

Eh, Pelosi's self-imposed deadline which she missed did not exactly "make progress." If anything, it gave the progressives a window in which they knew how long they needed to hold their caucus members in line to avoid caving to Pelosi's wish that they pass infrastructure without some action from the Senate toward passing the budget reconciliation. And even as the business day closed on Friday, it seemed Pelosi and Biden were no closer to securing the support necessary to pass infrastructure this week as the president traveled to Capitol Hill to meet with Democrats as the "closer" on a deal.

After the meeting on Capitol Hill, President Biden changed the tune from Thursday's missed deadline to "it doesn't matter when" the bill is passed, seemingly another concession that Biden and Pelosi still — even after the president went personally to the Capitol — don't have the votes to pass the president's infrastructure bill.