The new White House rule: Do not talk about Joe Manchin

As another round of talks on a climate and spending bill ramps up, aides and advocates are under strict orders to keep their mouths shut — lest they antagonize the all-important senator.

By ADAM CANCRYN and EUGENE DANIELS @ Politico.com, 04/11/2022 04:30 AM EDT​

The fate of President Joe Biden’s domestic agenda may hinge on his administration’s ability to do one simple thing: Shut up.

Four months after Biden’s Build Back Better plan collapsed amid a bitter back-and-forth with Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.), the White House is taking a final shot at resuscitating its social spending bill — and this time it’s vowing a sharply different approach to the negotiations.

Top Biden officials are keeping their ambitions vague. They’re steering clear of firm deadlines. Most importantly, they’re trying as hard as possible to just not talk about it at all.

“I would quite explicitly not comment on the conversations that are happening,” Brian Deese, Biden’s National Economic Council director, told reporters at a recent event hosted by the Christian Science Monitor. “I don’t think that has served anyone particularly well.”

The administration-wide gag order imposed over the last several weeks is a marked shift from earlier efforts to hype Biden’s expansive policy vision — and a tacit acknowledgment that the White House has learned its lesson.

The administration and its allies spent months last year trying to pressure Manchin into supporting a $1.7 trillion climate and social spending package, only to see the negotiations blow up in December.

Now Manchin is signaling he’s willing to deal again, and Democrats are all but begging him to write the legislation himself.

“This is really up to Joe,” one person familiar with the party dynamics said of senior Democrats’ attitude. “It’s basically going to be the Manchin reconciliation bill when all is said and done.” [.....]

You could have, as an alternate,delivered a more robustly Democratic Senate. BUT THAT DIDN'T HAPPEN. So deal with the reality of this country.