Democrats, Stung by Electoral Losses, Press Forward on Biden Agenda – The New York Times

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WASHINGTON — Smarting from an off-year electoral rebuke, congressional Democrats pushed forward on Wednesday toward House votes this week on nearly $3 trillion worth of social policy, infrastructure and climate change programs — but with a deep new worry after Tuesday’s stunning losses: Would a legislative victory help or hurt their political standing?

The day after a defeat in Virginia’s governor’s race and a too-close-to-call race in the Democratic stronghold of New Jersey, the party’s representatives in Congress toiled to keep recriminations at a minimum. But centrist and moderate Democrats grumbled that the party’s left flank had held back final passage of what they considered the most popular part of the agenda, a bipartisan $1 trillion infrastructure bill.

Senator Mark Warner, a Virginia Democrat who campaigned hard for Terry McAuliffe, only to see him lose, said, “What I heard when I was out campaigning for the ticket was, ‘Hey, you guys got the White House, the Senate, the House. When are you going to get more things done?’ I mean only in Washington could people think that it is a smart strategy to take a once-in-a-generation investment in infrastructure and prevent your president from signing that bill into law. And that’s somehow a good strategy?”

Senator Joe Manchin III, Democrat of West Virginia, added: “We have a proven piece of legislation in the infrastructure bill that should have been done — we should have taken that. But you know, that’s water over the dam now.”

Source Article from https://www.nytimes.com/2021/11/03/us/politics/democrats-virginia-biden-congress.html

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