Member-only story
Why Bernie Sanders Was the Safer Option
Build Back Better is dead, the Biden presidency is over, Harris is deeply unpopular, and massive losses in ’22 and ’24 are looming
“The problems we face did not come down from the heavens. They are made, they are made by bad human decisions, and good human decisions can change them.” — Senator Bernie Sanders
With Manchin officially doing what many knew he was going to do, namely knife Biden’s presidency and the Build Back Better bill, Americans are wondering how everything could have played out differently. Were these dragged-out negotiations and this slow-motion train wreck of a presidency inevitable? Could the White House have seized the momentum they had coming into the year and passed the large social spending bill in the spring? Knowing Manchin would be the lone hold-out, if Biden had applied more pressure early, would that have changed the outcome?
Those are questions we’ll never know the answer to but ones some Democrats are surely grappling with as their entire agenda is a smoldering heap of garbage, the President has cratered in the polls, and the VP is deeply, deeply unpopular.
There are many shrugging their shoulders in an ‘I told you so’ manner, like the six members of the Squad that voted against the…
