Manchin and Biden Can’t Agree on BBB

CLAY: Maybe we need to get a breaking news sounder that is official for the show here, Buck, but I don’t know what that sound should be. But we’ll at some point pick an official breaking news sounder ’cause we do get a lot of breaking news on this show. This is from CNN. “Talks between Manchin and Biden…” This is a tweet from Manu Raju, who covers Capitol Hill for CNN:

This kills any virtually any hope of getting the bill done by Christmas as Schumer had hoped. Biden and Manchin not close to a deal

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) December 15, 2021

Again, that was just tweeted in the past 10 minutes by Manu Raju, who covers Capitol Hill for CNN and has been on the Manchin beat quite a lot as Joe Manchin has been the significant pivot point for much of Biden’s congressional agenda. Now, Buck, this is significant because if the Democrats cannot get this Build Back Better bill done before 2021 ends, then you’re gonna have the holiday break.

And then you move into a midterm election year which could make things even more difficult, potentially, to get done. But Joe Manchin appears to be holding his ground. And one more bit here, Buck. Joe Manchin is also saying now that he may well run for reelection in 2024. Donald Trump won the state of West Virginia by 39 points. If he’s running for reelection, he ain’t backing Build Back Better. I’d be stunned.

BUCK: I think he likes being the most powerful senator at this moment in America.

CLAY: Yeah, he is.

BUCK: I think he enjoys that he’s in a position — and let’s be honest about this. He is the dam holding back the left-wing insanity within his own party here. Now, this isn’t some maverick move that nobody saw coming. He’s a Democrat in West Virginia, as you point out. He’s really a guy who is pretty close toward the center, as close as you can be and still technically be considered a Democrat.

But in the broader picture, the Build Back Better issue here is if they don’t get this thing done and they don’t get it done in a big way — or, as a friend, a former president would say, “bigly.” He actually taught me that word. I thought he said “big league” the first time he said it, but it’s actually “bigly.” If they don’t get it done in that fashion, here’s the issue they deal with, Clay.

We’ve been talking a lot here about Biden, the Democrats being wrong on the border, wrong on the economy, wrong on a lot of key aspects of covid mitigation and flattening and stopping the virus, flattening the curve. They’re wrong on crime in ways that are… They’re wrong on all these things. But when you add the Build Back Better phenomenon into it?

All the talking about it, all the pushing for it if they don’t get it, now you’ve got an administration that is wrong and incompetent, right? That’s a whole other level. It’s one thing when the crazy Marxists in your midst are saying things about, “Oh, it’s all gonna get better in the future,” and they’re at least executing on their plans. It’s another thing when they look like bumbling buffoons and they have bad ideas.

CLAY: Well, and this, I think, Buck, becomes an intriguing question. If they’re not able to do it before the end of the year, when in 2022 would this be able to be passed? Because certainly by the time you get to the summer they’re not, I don’t think, gonna try to ram anything through as it’s already primary season and the election season is upon us.

BUCK: And how is that going to really benefit them? What’s in this bill that they like so much? A whole lot of spending for favored Democrat constituencies. Now, the longer timeline that will, of course, get spent when they pass it, but it won’t really be the infusion of cash and a distribution of projects, et cetera, that they want it to be in time for the midterm.

So they’re gonna be making a lot of promises about, “Oh, this will…” We’re assuming they get something done here. There may be a possibility that Manchin just keeps saying, right, “I don’t see the wisdom of this.” In which case, what do the Democrats have to offer the American people as the story of Biden, assuming that happens? And that’s a big “if.” I still think they’ll get something done. But what does the talking point become? January 6th? Just turn on CNN all day? Give me a break.

CLAY: It’s gonna be abortion. They’re gonna get a ruling in some way. We don’t know what the Supreme Court’s gonna do. But I think the Democrats’ entire 2022 strategy is going to boil down to what the Supreme Court does on abortion. They’re gonna take away the right to abortion and they’re gonna run that as hard as they can. I think they’re gonna have to abandon January 6th ’cause I just don’t think it has any real staying power for them.

BUCK: You absolutely… I mean, this could be, right? We’re going six months in the future here, but I would just add into this, remember with Kavanaugh they thought that the War on Women that Kavanaugh represented…? I want to be very clear. They lied about Brett Kavanaugh. They were all lying about Brett Kavanaugh. It was a smear. It was grotesque. All three of them, all right?

You had a woman who was clearly deranged, the third one. You had a second woman who didn’t even remember the accusation and a first woman who was coached and had all kinds of holes in the story and could never even prove she was in the same place, actually met Brett Kavanaugh.

CLAY: She could never even prove they met ever, not even to have had a sexual assault.

BUCK: Never in the same location. Okay. Put that aside for a second, though. That probably… Maybe it was the ugliness of it, and so maybe they’ve learned a little something about how they’ll have to do the politics of the abortion issue in June because they were so heinous to Kavanaugh, but that saved a couple of Senate seats in that year.

CLAY: No doubt. I think that flipped things in a big way. And then, by the way, the Democrats have learned they didn’t go as hard in the paint after Amy Coney Barrett even though she was replacing Ruth Bader Ginsburg because they knew, I think, that if they went after a in
mom who is as good of a witness and as skilled and as worthy of a job like that, that they would alienate a lot of suburban women voters. She was kind of the queen suburban woman voter, right?

BUCK: Turns out there are some limits to Democrats. They couldn’t convince anybody in America that Amy Coney Barrett, 30 years, ago groped somebody she had actually never met and had no contact with. I just want to remind you in the Kavanaugh situation, there were at least dozens — it may have been hundreds — of false claims around that, what people were saying.

Oh, people were writing into the committee, “Brett Kavanaugh raped me in the state of,” you know, name a state, and Brett Kavanaugh never even been to that state. People were just lying all over the place. It’s the Democrat Party. It’s become a party run by some very big lies. Defund the police is not insane. We don’t have an open border. Spending more money doesn’t cause inflation.

Male swimmers and female swimmers? No difference between the two! Clay, we got to dive into that some more too. But to the Biden agenda there’s a reason why his polls… I mean, he just said that he thinks the Democrats are gonna do well in the midterms. No Democrat actually believes that right now. None of them.

CLAY: Yeah, he has to say that.