| Side rant (though somewhat similar to colpabar's reply): The Democrats tried to govern like they had a large majority, when they had 5 (I think) seats in the House, and a 50/50 Senate. Of course it failed! If you need every single vote, you can only go as far as the least-willing member will let you go. The Democrats never should have tried to govern that way. They should have been coalition building, trying to find some common ground where they could do some things. Instead, they acted like they could dictate their agenda to Congress. Both Biden and Pelosi should have known better; they have decades of experience in Congress. Why did they do this? You could argue that they did it because they knew that no Republican would ever cooperate on anything. But if that was the reason, they still should have gone for what they could get through the members they had, not going for the moon. Or you could suspect that they wanted to blame the Republicans (and maybe the more conservative Democrats) for their lack of progress, as a tactic to win the next election. Well, from all the indications so far, that's not working out for them. So why did they take the approach they took? |
> So why did they take the approach they took?
The Republicans set that precedent (trying to govern like they had a large majority). I don't mean that as a "the other side does it too", just that each side has become increasingly vindictive of the other, making it much more difficult to work together when doing so is necessary to get anything done at all. We will continue to see power swaps with the winning side spinning its wheels while shutting the other side out.