“I don’t think any of us are expecting anything else to pass,” said Colin Strother, a Democratic operative and veteran of House campaigns in Texas. Strother said the party in Washington has “underwhelmed, underachieved and undersold” it’s successes so far. “It has left our opponents emboldened, or supporters dejected and our prospects for 2022 dim if not dark. So we have a lot of work to do to dig out of this … We better have some golden fuckin’ shovels.”…

“It becomes much harder if you’re talking about what Republicans cut off rather than what you’ve delivered,” said Greenberg, one of the few officials POLITICO spoke with who still believes Democrats could pass something — even a slimmed down social spending bill — through Congress in the next few months. “If this thing just goes away, you really do have a very different definition of the election,” he said…

“We need to be working on Plan B right now and Plan B would be what do we do if the Build Back Better falls apart completely,” said Rep. Susan Wild (D-Pa.), who represents a battleground district and is urging Democrats to focus on legislation that could emerge from the larger package, mentioning health care and home health care as starting points. “I don’t want to see us get into a situation where we are trying to advance individual bills that, quite frankly, don’t have any chance of success. That’s the same thing as knocking your head against the wall.”