Nancy Pelosi just nailed it. So much for “House Democrats in disarray.”
Over the past few days a handful of House Democrats from moderate districts have publicly expressed concerns about the size of the $3.5 trillion infrastructure package, suggesting it involved too much spending. They were only doing this so they could go back and tell swing voters in their districts that they too were “concerned” about all the spending. But large chunks of the media nonetheless used this as an opportunity to rack up ratings and page views by pushing the “Democrats in disarray” narrative.
Not surprisingly, Speaker Pelosi managed to get every House Democrat to vote in favor of the infrastructure package today. It’s a credit to her that she got it done, which she always does. Then again, this was always going to be the outcome, wasn’t it? No House Democrat was actually going to vote against infrastructure.
Of course there’s still work to be done. The Senate has already passed the $1 trillion bipartisan component of President Biden’s infrastructure plan with 60 votes, but the worst Senate Democrats will need to be wrangled in order to pass this $3.5 trillion reconciliation component, even with 50 votes.
But at this point it’s clear that at no point was infrastructure “doomed” as so many pundits and media outlets have claimed at various points along the way. This kind of doomsday punditry doesn’t help anything, except the careers of the pundits who promote it. It’s time we start ignoring those folks who are always insisting we’re “doomed” or going to lose “no matter what.” Such prognostications rarely turn out to have been based in fact.
