Build Back Better was doomed from the start
Joe Manchin was never going to vote for Build Back Better. Now that he's declared himself a "no" and all but killed President Biden's titanic spending package, it's time for Democrats to admit as much. To be sure, Manchin has played well the role of centrist negotiator. He's furrowed his brow and raised pragmatic concerns over renewable energy and inflation. He's huddled with his fellow Joe at the White House and won plenty of concessions. He's provided chum for bored (and boring) political analysts, as analyzing him and his fellow holdout Kyrsten Sinema became a kind of Kremlinology for the Twitter-addicted. But such breathless parsing forgets one simple fact: all politics is local.
