These developments raise some important questions. Such as: Why on earth would Senators Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, Maggie Hassan, and Catherine Cortez Masto continue to acquiesce with their party’s extraordinarily foolish attempt to shove a set of FDR-sized spending programs through a 50–50 Senate? Such as: Why on earth would a swathe of moderate House Democrats agree to go along with it, when, by all appearances, they are already going to have their work cut out for them next year? Such as: What, exactly, does the Democratic Party think it is playing at?…

Joe Manchin, without whose vote the most ambitious elements of the Democrats’ agenda cannot pass, says that he remains opposed to “additional handouts or transfer payments,” new programs that “will never go away,” and “shell games” — which, in practice, means that he should be against pretty much everything that is on offer. In a statement recently, Manchin proposed that “great nations throughout history have been weakened by careless spending,” confirmed that he was aware of “the brutal fiscal reality our nation faces,” and asked, “How much is enough?” The result from Virginia should present him with his answer.

And if, for some reason it does not, it should inspire the mother of all revolts in the House. It is comprehensible that Nancy Pelosi would wish to end her career by shoveling as much money out of the door as is possible. But it is not at all clear why scores of House Democrats — many of whom prevailed in 2020 in precisely the sort of districts that Glenn Youngkin won today — would elect to follow her off the cliff. It cannot be repeated enough that there is no good reason for the United States, which remains intractably mired in debt, to follow up an unexpected $6 trillion, COVID-19-inspired spending spree with another unsolicited feast that, per White House chief of staff Ron Klain, is “twice as big, in real dollars, as the New Deal was.”