The Democrats, you may have heard, are in disarray. President Joe Biden’s approval ratings have sunk to new lows, and his expansive economic agenda is stalled on Capitol Hill. Opposition from progressives forced House leaders to scrap a planned vote Thursday on the president’s lone bipartisan success in the Senate, a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill. That failure, and the ensuing finger-pointing, threatens to drive the party’s warring wings even further apart. Come Halloween, all that Biden might have to show for his negotiations with Congress over the past several months is a first-ever U.S. debt default—the presidential equivalent of sticking your hand into the candy bag and pulling out a razor blade instead.
Yet if Halloween is looking grim for Democrats, Christmas could bring more hope. These setbacks are not final or fatal, and time is still on their side. The deadlines Democrats missed this week were largely artificial, and House leaders said a vote on the infrastructure bill could still happen as early as Friday.
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