MANCHIN AND SINEMA: Cassandras of the Senate.

After Biden surveyed the wreckage in Virginia, he urged his party to hit the gas pedal on passing the infrastructure and Build Back Better bills, suggesting that perhaps the failure to pass the acts affected the outcome of the Virginia governor’s race. This is a typical trick, one he learned from his old boss: if people don’t like the agenda, it must be because there isn’t enough of it.

But Manchin and Sinema are in the right here. They have navigated the negotiations patiently and deftly, perhaps aware of what happened to their party the last time an enormous unpopular package was rammed through Congress by Nancy Pelosi and Chuck Schumer. Obamacare was passed in 2010, but four years later the Democrats were still paying the price for its unpopularity. The 2014 midterm swing was the largest transfer of congressional power since World War Two. 2022 looks to not only be a repeat, but worse, even at local levels where the core of the Democratic Party power structure is in danger: teachers’ unions.

The media is haranguing Manchin and Sinema. Activists and members of their own party are hounding and alienating them. But the two senators who have urged restraint on Biden’s massive spending agenda not only find themselves looking like prophets for issuing electoral warnings but could very well find themselves as two of the safest members of the party. And they know it.

Sinema, and more to the point Manchin see what lies ahead of a rudderless president who can’t get out of his own way and is beholden to the far left and journalists on Twitter. They are both playing the long game for their own political futures. Their party is failing to take notice.

Related: Manchin, Spanberger: Fellow Dems better realize Biden’s no FDR.

UPDATE: Far left environmental activists swarm Joe Manchin’s Maserati as he tries to leave parking garage. “‘Weird that blocking someone from driving to work, screaming at them, and then pretending he was running you over didn’t make him empathize with you!’ added Maggie Howell, a staffer for House Minority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.).”