While I find what is happening with the Build Back Better plan disgusting, I hope that all the people that blame Obama for all the shortcomings of the ACA, blamed him for not fighting hard enough, and whatever fiction that was spun for the past decade-plus that a long hard look at how Biden plan's are getting his plan torn apart, and how the majority of the party is with Biden, not the moderates
This is very close to what happened with the ACA. Sabotage after sabotage driven by centrist Dems
Where the marginal votes is at matters, and any liberal agenda is in danger if the marginal voters are people like Manchin Libermann, Sinema, and Nelson.
Something I remember distinctly was the unctuous concern about Harry Reid making State specific incentives in order to get the votes for the ACA. One of the first things the Tea Party Congress did was ban earmarks. Late 2010 and early 2011, earmarks were considered an imminent threat to the Republic.
This time around, those State-specific option aren’t there as much.
It’s funny because in every other context, conservatives and centrists love to essentialize entire States and then use these supposed differences to justify doing absolutely nothing good. We are told that no politician from Texas or Louisiana or Oklahoma can do anything to regulate oil drilling since those States are “oil States.” and no politician from Kentucky, Pennsylvania, West Virginia, or Tennessee can do anything about climate change since those are “coal States,” and no politician from any North Eastern State can be expected to reign in Wall Street or big Pharma because apparently everyone in the North East works on Wall Street or for big Pharma. This is all to say nothing of the conservative justification for the electoral college, as if no one in Nebraska could have thing in common with someone living in California.
Of course, conservatives know that even though the Senate gives equal representation to each State, each State, nowadays, is pretty generic. That is why they banned earmarks. They know that most Americans have the same problems: low wages, precarity, housing instability, and a government that ranges from indifferent to hostile to their existence. Meanwhile, the rich are similarly generic and they tend to live in luxury glass cubes in about six different metro areas, and this includes most of the adult children of a majority of Senators.
So by taking away State specific inducements, the elite have even further reduced the chances of the Senate doing anything good for anyone who isn't wealthy. They got what they want, every Republican and a couple of Democrats blocking the people’s will. And while these 52 Senators act as delegates for the 1%, they can claim it’s all in accordance with the supposed idiosyncrasies of the folks back in their home State.