Has Joe Biden’s big progressive spending package reached the look-for-loose-change stage, or is it only mostly dead? Joe Manchin either brushed up on his blaving, or he has finally sucked fifty years of progressive life out of the Biden White House:

Sen. Joe Manchin, asked about Build Back Better, said: “What Build Back Better bill? I don’t know what you guys are talking about.”

I asked him if he’s had any talks on the matter since December. “No, no, no, no. It’s dead.”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) February 1, 2022

Does this just mean that negotiations have stalled, or is the effort truly dead?  YMMV, but this does appear to be a death blow. Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported that progressives had tried turning the tables on Manchin and told him to put up a proposal he could support for BBB:

Democrats are increasingly willing to accept whatever child-care, healthcare and climate package that Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) would support as they return to Washington this week, hoping to salvage elements of the party’s economic agenda after months of failed negotiations.

Party lawmakers have started to change their attitude toward the package as they grapple with the possibility of failing to convert their narrow control of Congress into progress on major party goals. Some have moved away from insisting that the package include particular priorities, instead advocating for the party to notch a result with Mr. Manchin ahead of the midterm elections. …

Rep. Ro Khanna (D., Calif.), a member of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, said many Democrats would likely accept whatever agreement they can reach with Mr. Manchin, even if they are disappointed.

“What are you going to do, you put a bill on the floor that the president supports and the speaker supports and takes historic steps on climate and gives free pre-K to every three- and four-year-old in America and a progressive is going to say ‘No I’m going to vote against it?’” he said. “How am I going to explain that?”

“Manchin should have the pen, we should respect that whatever he wants to do will be reasonable and ultimately be historic,” he added.

Well, that didn’t last long, did it? It’s possible that Manchin’s talking about a reconciliation vehicle in general rather than just these priorities in particular, but that’s not much more comfort. Without reconciliation, progressives can’t get any of their agenda passed in this session of Congress. And that seems to suit Manchin just fine.

His colleagues in the Senate and White House may have already given up on the BBB project anyway. Late yesterday, Politico reported that Democrats planned to “pivot to the economy,” a rather tardy recognition of their dilemma:

Many in the party acknowledge they will need to do some serious damage control — passing new measures, as well as taking credit for President Joe Biden’s earlier recovery bill, which they say staved off a total economic free-fall — before the midterm elections in less than 10 months.

“We do have our eye on the economic recovery,” said California Rep. Pete Aguilar , vice chair of the Democratic caucus, touting jobs that were already added under Biden. “There will be absolutely pieces of legislation that we discussed that will continue to help alleviate supply chain issues and tamp down inflationary pressures.”

After the party’s failed push on voting rights and with the White House’s biggest domestic priority stalled, House Democrats will pivot hard this week to a huge policy bill intended to shore up U.S. manufacturing, particularly to increase competitiveness with China. That bill is expected to come to the House floor by week’s end, where it’ll have to win near-unanimous support within the Democratic caucus given that most House Republicans oppose the legislation.

Swing-district Democrats have been the most vocal proponents of the shift to an economic bill that could actually become law, anxious to show voters that they’re tackling the crises that could seal lawmakers’ political fates in November.

The stimulus bill in March didn’t “stave off” anything, let alone “a total economic free fall.” The CARES Act might have done that in April 2020, but by the time Joe Biden took office, Congress had passed a new stimulus/relief bill whose funds had only really begun to get dispersed before Biden and Democrats pushed the third bill through Congress. That bill did nothing but overheat the economy by goosing demand without dealing with the supply-chain crisis, and predictably touched off the worst inflationary wave in almost 40 years — which has created Democrats’ electoral crisis in 2022.

The time to “pivot” to counter-inflationary policy was last summer, not this winter. Instead, Democrats insisted on two frontal assaults on Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema in pursuit of radical progressive agendas and wasted months before recognizing the math of the US Senate. They are indeed desperate at this point to come up with any kind of win, but to get there they’ll have to work with Republicans. Their incomprehensible brute-force strategy up to now has stripped away any pretense that the GOP has been the obstruction to responsible governance in the midterms.

That’s the real reason why Build Back Better is dead, at least for a while. Manchin didn’t kill it, but he’s apparently happy to act as its undertaker.