Per John’s post below, in politics, there’s pointless emoting and then there’s swallowing hard to try to keep advancing where you want to go. The White House is clearly choosing the former today, and you’ve got to believe it’s going to make it that much harder to get Manchin on some much-reduced new version of BBB next year, which presumably should be the White House’s (perhaps totally unattainable) goal here.

Do they really think they are going to shame Manchin into playing ball with them? As a senior White House aide told Playbook, “Whoever at the White House who thinks it’s a good idea to go scorched earth needs to be fired. . . . He’s the president. He’s supposed to be the adult.”