Four months ago, in marveling at the then still-ongoing slow-motion collapse of the Democrats’ legislative agenda around here, I suggested one factor in that mess that seemed particularly worthy of attention:
I think Senate Democrats must still be digesting the absolutely bizarre signed, written arrangement Schumer reached with Manchin back on July 28 — which laid out detailed if (sort of) nonbinding terms for Manchin’s engagement with the Democrats’ social-spending bill that both senators then kept secret from most other Senate Democrats for two months. I can’t think of a more imprudent and downright strange move by a party leader in the modern Congress. You have to imagine that every Democrat will now want Schumer’s signature on an individualized statement of terms on every issue that matters to him or her, since after all every Democrat is the essential 50th vote on every party-line bill. And you have to assume that every Democrat will now also wonder if Schumer has made such an agreement in secret with every other Democrat on every such bill. It’s nuts, but it’s also a kind of encapsulation of Schumer’s leadership style.
This week, we learned of an extraordinary additional wrinkle in that very strange drama. In a story on Schumer’s leadership, CNN’s Edward-Isaac Dovere and Manu Raju report that the agreement was even more secret than it seemed:
The Senate majority leader, though, didn’t tell House Speaker Nancy Pelosi about the document, who later made clear that she felt blindsided. As has never been previously disclosed, Schumer also didn’t tell President Joe Biden or top White House aides. They didn’t find out until after months of work and drama trying to get a $3.5 trillion bill written even though Manchin told Schumer his limit was $1.5 trillion.
Looking back, many involved in the negotiations wonder if that was one of the fatal flaws that now leaves them without the President’s signature legislation and headed into midterms with a narrative of dysfunction
Yeah, you think? Now to be fair, Manchin was pretty open and public about what he did and didn’t want throughout this period, and Schumer, Pelosi, and Biden all seemed intent on ignoring that. But I still think it would have made an enormous difference to the White House’s strategy if they had known there was a framework that Manchin had laid out in writing with Schumer and was willing to advance. And whether it would have changed anything or not as a practical matter, Schumer keeping something like that to himself and not telling the other key leaders of his own party is just simply malpractice. It has to make it awfully hard for everyone else in his party to trust his judgment now.
Manchin’s ultimate abandonment of the Build Back Better process was a close-run thing. It was not foreordained. So Chuck Schumer may turn out to be personally responsible for the collapse of the Democrats’ agenda to a degree we’ve never really seen in a leader in the modern Congress. And it’s hard to see what he was even trying to achieve by doing what he did. Just bizarre.