The vice president’s disappearance has grown ever more noticeable as the government shutdown enters its eighth day with no resolution in sight and a debt limit crisis looms. Biden was once Democrats’ deal-maker-in-chief, designing budget pacts with Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell in the summer of 2011 and New Year’s Eve 2013.

But Biden’s deals rubbed Democrats raw. He gave up too much, they said.

And for that, they have frozen him out — at least for now.

“None of the deals Biden has struck have aged well from the perspective of the Democratic Caucus,” said one Senate Democratic official aware of Reid’s face-to-face insistence that Biden be excluded…

But the Reid-Biden tension stands out because the two men spent so much time together in the Senate — 22 years — and because they’re on the same team. It is also yet another example of how deteriorating relationships among the nation’s top political leaders are making it harder to game out a solution to the fiscal crisis.