I mean, even kids recognize that Santa Claus appreciates restraint. When explaining the huge list of progressive policy items included in this gaudy monstrosity, liberal writer Bill Scher notes that “Not even FDR tried to wrap Social Security, the National Labor Relations Act, the Banking Acts, the Securities Act, the National Industrial Recovery Act, and the Relief Appropriation Act into a single bill. Nor did LBJ try to bundle the Civil Rights Act, the Fair Housing Act, the Voting Rights Act, the Economic Opportunity Act, the Elementary and Secondary Education Act, the Food Stamp Act, the Urban Mass Transportation Act and the creation of Medicare and Medicaid.”

This bill is basically the left’s wish list, with nothing crossed out and all of it lumped into one do-or-die spending behemoth.

Manchin is the natural voice of opposition within his party because he may be the only possible Democrat who could hold on to that Senate seat in West Virginia, which went for Trump by nearly 40 points last year. If Manchin wasn’t there then Mitch McConnell would still be running the Senate. Democrats have a shot of passing a reconciliation bill only because Manchin is there, and that means he can say things other Democrats can’t.

And, to Manchin’s point, what’s with the urgency?