So why are progressives continuing to stick with the hostage-taking plan, even as they watch Build Back Better get smaller and smaller? Because they have told themselves, as Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-N.Y) said last month on “Face the Nation,” that “both [bills] will not pass if people try to separate them.” They believe the moderates, particularly Manchin and Sen. Kyrsten Sinema (D-Ariz.), would kill Build Back Better outright if they pocketed the bipartisan infrastructure bill first. Rep. Ruben Gallego, a CPC member from Arizona who has begun to tease a 2024 primary challenge to Sinema, was blunt to Politico: “I think everyone is very clear that the biggest problem we have here is Manchin and Sinema. They [the progressives] don’t trust them.”

But what is the evidence that 1) either of them actually wants to kill Build Back Better and 2) if they do, that holding the bipartisan infrastructure bill hostage is keeping the two from killing it?

Various reports of Manchin’s and Sinema’s stingy negotiating postures have fed progressive mistrust, perhaps none more than the Oct. 21 dispatch, relayed by Sen. Jon Tester (D-Mont.) to Axios, that in a negotiating session over the topline amount, Manchin told Sen. Bernie Sanders, “I’m comfortable with zero.”

But progressives should recognize that Manchin expressed that sentiment while the bipartisan infrastructure bill remains a hostage. Delaying its passage did not make moderates more willing to accept progressive demands. The adversarial dynamic has only prompted moderates to dig in their heels deeper and wield their leverage more aggressively.