"Reid stipulated one condition: No Joe Biden"

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.

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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.

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