The Democrats have two intractable political problems right now. The first is inflation. Gas is now, on average across the country, $5 a gallon. The consequent price increases on every other product that travels to its destination via trucks is doing huge damage to family budgets.

The second problem is that Democrats antagonized many of the voters who turned to them in the 2018 elections to act as a check on Donald Trump. Democrats have, in a very short time, become associated with an extreme ideological fringe that has antagonized suburban parents by imposing the latest progressive intellectual fads as a woke curriculum in schools.

Joe Manchin has prevented each of these problems from being much, much worse than they are. First, his opposition dramatically scaled down and ultimately halted the passage of Build Back Better, which began as a $6 trillion spending package meant to completely renovate the American social compact and expand the reach of the federal government into the lives of Americans…

But even the scaled-down version would have made the second problem much worse. Build Back Better’s dramatic federal entry into day care was loaded with culture-war restrictions.