Unforced error

Looking back, the stakes of the Build Back Better debate were plainly laid out.

Delivering his first address to Congress in 2021, President Biden laid out a grand view of the challenge facing his party. “We have to prove democracy still works, that our government still works, and we can deliver for our people,” Biden said, announcing a sweeping, multi-trillion dollar package to establish paid family leave, childcare support, housing investment, universal pre-K, public community college, Medicare expansion, and more. Later that year, Sen. Bernie Sanders was even more blunt. “It’s absolutely imperative if democracy is to survive that we do everything that we can to say, ‘Yes, we hear your pain and we are going to respond to your needs,” he told the New York Times.

Across the party, there was agreement that passage of Biden’s domestic agenda, now packaged into the Build Back Better Act, represented an existential test for the party. “Failure is not an option,” warned now-House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries. So did Rep. Suzanne DelBene, then-chair of the centrist New Democratic Coalition, and liberal Sen. Ron Wyden. Columnists echoed the sentiment.

But failure was an option. The Build Back Better Act died, and with it the vast majority of the programs Biden had proposed. Democrats were ultimately able to pass the Inflation Reduction Act, but, even as it delivered the party a significant political and policy victory, including the biggest climate action ever taken by the U.S., the law did not even begin to approach BBB’s scope.

When the party lost full control of D.C. in 2022, the scoreboard was clear: Democrats had failed to raise the federal minimum wage. They failed to extend the expanded child tax credit. They failed to pass a public health insurance option. They failed to enact a national paid leave program, or universal pre-K, or public community college, or federal housing investment, or new union protections, or universal drug price reform, or a new national childcare program. They failed to expand Medicare or lower its eligibility age. They even failed to raise tax rates on corporations and high-income earners.

Those measures, largely popular in polls, commanded support from nearly every congressional Democrat. The fault for their failure lies almost exclusively with holdout Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, who, despite being frequently conflated by the public, had very different objections to the bill. While Manchin supported elements like aggressive drug-price reform and tax increases on the wealthy, Sinema opposed them. While Sinema supported elements like paid family leave and an expansive child tax credit, Manchin opposed them.

To the more conspiratorial-minded members of the online left, this indicated a coordinated, “rotating villain.” In reality, it was the result of a Senate majority that, because of 2020 race losses and structural Republican advantages in the chamber, was dependent on two very different iterations of moderate Democratic identity — each of which winnowed the party’s agenda from opposing ends. (Sinema’s office did not respond to a request for comment, while Manchin’s office reiterated his 2021 objections to the legislation).

But the nuance behind Build Back Better’s failure, how close Democrats came to defying the underlying political dynamics, how remarkable it was that they were able to pass the legislation they did, changed nothing about a core fact. The party had been swept into power promising structural change to the country’s economic system and was unable to deliver— at the precise moment that global economic upheaval and pain hit the country. In the wake of this November’s results, which saw Republicans making historic gains among the working class, some progressives argue the bill’s failure had a steep political cost.

“It was a huge blow to our being able to show that we were addressing the economic concerns of people, and in this election we saw exactly what that looked like,” said Rep. Pramila Jayapal, chair of the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Jayapal was a major figure in the 2021 debate, frequently finding herself at odds with Manchin and Sinema. “It was a massive problem to convince the country that Democrats cared, because two people managed to block that agenda,” she added.

“What was proposed in the Build Back Better Act would have transformed the way families are able to afford care and basic expenses,” said Vicki Shabo, a senior fellow at New America. Pointing to the bill’s potential impact on Americans’ biggest out-of-pocket costs, Shabo argues it would have changed both the economy and voters’ individual sentiments. “Things would have begun to look substantially different right around now,” she said.

But instead, Democrats found themselves lurching from an agenda once likened to the New Deal and Great Society, to touting traditional indicators of economic well-being: GDP numbers, factory investment, the unemployment rate. When she became the Democratic nominee, Kamala Harris subtly changed the party’s messaging, making a point to project more awareness of voters’ malaise. But she also ran in the shadow of BBB’s failure, proposing far more targeted, piecemeal changes.

“We sort of dropped the rest of the [Build Back Better] agenda instead of putting that front and center,” said Rep. Ro Khanna. “Instead, we got ‘ok we’re gonna get homecare workers for the elderly.’ Wonderful. ‘And we’re gonna get a housing tax credit.’ Terrific. But you don’t become the leader of the free world because you’re gonna give your people homecare workers or a housing tax credit. You become the leader of the free world by telling a story: what’s happened to the American dream?”

For its part, the White House continues to hew to Biden’s original campaign messaging. A spokesman called him “one of the most legislatively successful presidents in modern history" and reiterated the administration's view that the United States has “the strongest economy in the world.”

To many in the party, that misses the point. “We can say factually that the American economy is the strongest in the world,” said Khanna. “That has always been the case for the past 50 years. But the point is, there was a hollowing out of the middle and working class.” Sanders’ staff pointed to his scathing Boston Globe op-ed, which included his argument that the party “ignored justified anger of working class America and became the defenders of a rigged economic and political system.”

That Democrats, led by Harris, allowed themselves to cede the mantle of anger at the status quo has generally become a point of agreement. “She sort of tried to empathize with voters more, but I'm not sure she was angry,” said Navin Nayak, president of the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “Name me a time when she named a corporation that was ripping off consumers. Donald Trump picks very specific fights with companies, rightly or wrongly.”

There are open debates about whether Build Back Better could have further fueled inflation, and not everyone in the party agrees that measures like it could have changed the party’s fate, arguing liberals are facing an informational problem. “I think it is flawed for Democrats to think that just solving those problems is going to bring sweeping majorities back to the party,” Nayak said. “Biden literally saved the pensions of the Teamsters. I mean, single-handedly saved the pension of the Teamsters. And the Teamsters sat the election out and didn't endorse.”

Still, the legacy of the 2021 battle hangs over election results that can be explained, at least in part, by deep fissures in news consumption. To plugged-in political observers, the two years of Democratic governance were remarkable. Despite historically narrow majorities in both chambers, Congress had pumped out big-ticket legislation, reversed the paralysis of bipartisan legislating, and set the stage for a decade of high-tech growth.

To working and middle-class people viewing the government through a personal lens, the picture may have been very different: a party tasked with rebuilding the country had failed to enact the agenda items it once framed as prerequisites for a fair economy. And that failure may have played a significant role in returning Donald Trump to the White House.

Just as Democrats predicted. 

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