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“At a certain point, we’ve got to trust one another,” said progressive Rep. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

“The level of trust is blinking red in Congress, both among members as well as with American people,” added Rep. Stephanie Murphy (D-Fla.), a centrist leader.

Liberals, led by Congressional Progressive Caucus Chair Pramila Jayapal, checked their phones at the door and huddled for several hours in a House office building as they debated what to do. Biden phoned in, speaking with both Jayapal and then the larger caucus on speakerphone, as he urged them to support Democratic leaders’ plan to vote on the infrastructure bill Friday night.

“If our Blue Dog colleagues put up a yes vote on a rule and put out an assurance that is sufficiently airtight, like backed by the President of the United States, is that an option? Is there an alternative to an actual vote on the bill?” said Rep. Jared Huffman (D-Calif.), summarizing the debate within the CPC. “That is the conversation we’re having right now.”

Meanwhile, Pelosi was in a room just off the House chamber as she and her staff worked through a list of members who were opposed to the current strategy. Some of the holdouts received calls not just from the speaker and fellow Democrats, but from union groups back home urging them to vote in favor.

Democrats’ Friday night dash to try to push the infrastructure bill over the finish line — more than three months after the bipartisan legislation passed the Senate — capped off a dizzying day for the party. Pelosi and her lieutenants, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer and Majority Whip Jim Clyburn, kicked off the day confident they would have enough votes within the fractious caucus to both clear the infrastructure bill and send the much larger social and climate package to the Senate.

The effort, if successful, would’ve been a remarkable feat for Democratic leaders after months of public infighting between the party’s centrists and liberals threatened to derail — and then thwart — Biden’s domestic agenda.

The months of tumult have not been without significant cost — from Biden’s plunging poll numbers to an election night thrashing this week that saw Republicans triumph in deep-blue areas, foreshadowing a potentially disastrous midterm for the party next year.

But instead of coming together after their ballot box bruising this week, Democrats are set to again delay a vote on their $1.75 trillion party-line measure and turn their sights to just the $550 billion Senate-passed infrastructure bill — bending to the demands of their most vocal centrists in a last-ditch attempt to deliver at least one legislative win for Biden.

Democrats still planned to advance their broader $1.75 trillion climate and social safety net bill, set for passage without GOP votes, but it would only be a procedural move. And that’s not enough for many progressives.

The convoluted maneuver, first suggested by senior members of the Congressional Black Caucus, quickly became a problem for Democratic leaders. While they initially believed the move could cost them some liberal votes for the bipartisan infrastructure bill, they believed they could make up most of those from the GOP side of the aisle.

CBC Chair Joyce Beatty (D-Ohio) summed up the strategy: “Jim Clyburn came to me this morning and we sat down and we thought an initial dialogue might be good. To say, let’s vote on the rule to Build Back Better. At least you’re putting it out there … It’s a start. Is it the best solution? I don’t know.”

“I think it was the starting point,” Beatty added. “I really didn’t think about what would happen along the way.”

Pelosi quickly pivoted to the new strategy, which she announced to the caucus in a Friday afternoon letter. But no sooner did she do that than a panoply of progressives dug in and refused to go along, trapping Democratic leaders in a game of factional Whack-a-Mole.

“I’m a no,” said Rep. Rashida Tlaib (D-Mich.). When asked if she’d change her own stance against separating the two bills on the floor, Rep. Cori Bush (D-Mo.) replied “absolutely not.”

It remains unclear how many progressives ultimately back the infrastructure bill during a Friday night floor vote. Rep. Ro Khanna (D-Calif.) said that “I’m open to all possibilities and I’m open to giving the leadership a hearing.” Rep. Raúl Grijalva (D-Ariz.) signaled he’d support the bipartisan plan, but only if both bills passed on the same day.

Pelosi herself predicted a “large number of members of the progressive caucus” who are prepared to vote yes on infrastructure Friday night.

Members on Pelosi’s left flank have insisted for months that the social spending bill move together with the infrastructure proposal, and liberal opposition, helped scuttle previous attempts to move the infrastructure bill forward over the last two months.

It’s unlikely enough Republicans would be able to make up the difference if the expected number of progressives defect during a planned floor vote on the infrastructure package. Past GOP whip counts had Republican yes votes hovering around 10 for the Senate-passed measure, though some have privately warned the numbers could change if Democrats kept delaying the vote.

Democrats are still in talks about exactly when they would vote on passage of the social spending bill, although Pelosi and other top Democrats vowed to do so before Thanksgiving if possible. Nonetheless, an official budgetary analysis on potential costs may not come until Thanksgiving week.

Many in the caucus were baffled by the moderates’ resistance to pass the massive social spending bill. They argued it wasn’t the final version anyway, since the Senate was all but sure to make changes.

But for most centrist holdouts, that was exactly the problem: Democrats such as Murphy and Reps. Jared Golden (D-Maine) and Kurt Schrader (D-Ore.) have been beating the drum for weeks that they won’t vote for any legislation that can’t pass the Senate.

Doing so, they warned, would amount to a politically toxic vote on a sprawling bill packed with new spending and tax changes, only to see it be shredded by Senate centrists or be plucked from the bill by the chamber’s budget rulekeeper.

Nancy Vu contributed to this report.