For a bill that supposedly cost "nothing," Joe Biden and Nancy Pelosi can't even persuade their own party to vote for it. 

According to Fox News:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi drew up the white flag Friday evening, admitting that "more time is needed" to pass a $1 trillion infrastructure bill that is one of the pillars of President Biden's agenda, after previously vowing to pass the measure this week.

While Pelosi had promised moderate House Democrats the infrastructure bill would be on the floor, progressives threatened to sink it unless it was coupled with a $3.5 trillion spending measure, known as the Build Back Better Act, that includes a variety of social welfare programs. 

Seems they've gotten themselves into a hammerlock, held hostage by the members of their party's socialist "Squad."  The Squad, which couldn't care less what voters think beyond their own dead blue districts, have declared "my way or the highway" on government taxing and spending to the moon, while a moderate blue-dog caucus of about 20, whose members aren't too public (out of fear of the Squad), doesn't like this crap at all, knowing that its passage for each of them means that a Republican will take their seat in 2022.

So naturally, the whole thing has crashed.  The spectacular failure of this $1-trillion spendathon, supposedly on "infrastructure," as well as their Bernie Sanders–crafted $3.5-trillion pork "reconciliation," is now Biden's and Pelosi's legacy.  Sure, Pelosi tried to save face as she pulled those votes with a claim that she just needed more time, but the reality here is that these things fail for a reason.  It's the sound of the orchestra playing on Democrat ship Titanic.

What we have here are two old dinosaurs who can't control their party, trying to save face.  According to Politico:

After strongly signaling to progressives this week to hold the line on their demands for a massive climate and social spending bill, President Joe Biden took a trip to the Hill on Friday to deliver another message: prepare to eat half the loaf.

In remarks to House members, Biden warned progressives that they would likely have to accept a reconciliation bill with a price tag between $1.9 trillion and $2.3 trillion — well below the $3.5 trillion they'd initially priced for. To sell the deal, Biden argued that even at that reduced level, the party would still be making "historic" investments.

Nope, they certainly won't.  They've got an agenda to socialize America, and this won't cut it.  The moderates are probably willing to take a half a loaf or negotiate the bills downward, but the Squad remains implacable.

Nobody can get through to them in their dream to socialize America.

This is on Biden and Pelosi, who were put there in their leadership positions by shadowy Democrat operatives who wanted a sense of order and continuity based on their experience factor but failed to live up to the bargain.  What those Democrat powers that be and their loyal voters got is chaos now, and a big sinking ship.  Until they purge the far-left freaks in their party, their party's prospects at succeeding at anything, other than election fraud, are probably going to be nil.

And now they remain gerontocrats, dotards, people who can't keep up with the times.  They should be crushing the Squad and destroying their prospects, the same way the GOP has had to purge extremists from its ranks in the past.  But both are characters of failing faculties and clearly don't have the energy for it.  Biden visited Capitol Hill yesterday and had to be halted by his handlers from taking questions.  Then as his bid to persuade foundered, he hot-footed it to Delaware.

Jonah Goldberg, whom you may not agree with on everything, has some decent insights about why Biden failed.

Biden came into office with the narrowest majority in Congress, arguably in history: a 50-50 Senate with very small margin in the House. And yet, he let people convince him that the moment was ripe for a "transformative" agenda, one that would rival the New Deal. He misinterpreted the passage of his $1.9 trillion COVID relief package — on the heels of trillions of additional spending under the Trump administration — as a green light for vastly more spending. Adjusted for inflation, New Deal spending was a little less than $1 trillion in today's dollars. He's proposing, at minimum, several New Deals in spending.

Put aside the fact there is scant evidence the country is yearning for a new New Deal. Disregard that our national debt is around 125 percent of GDP. Biden, with a half-century of political experience under his belt, can't count votes. FDR and LBJ had huge majorities to work with for their major accomplishments. Even ObamaCare would have been impossible in today's Congress.

Of course, a major driver of Biden's predicament is that the base of the Democratic Party can't read the room either. But they don't care.

Biden, however, is the president. He's the one who insisted on the campaign trail that "To lead America, you have to understand America," and he touted his mastery of how Washington works.

Historically, presidents adjust to reality. They choose sides in intraparty debates. Bill Clinton had a miserable first two years, but that guy knew how to read a room.

Biden's always been pretty much a clown on that front, but it's worse now that he's old and enfeebled.  Don Surber blames it, probably quite accurately, on his failed Afghanistan pullout, which exposed him as weak and out of touch.  Defeats, it seems, have consequences, as well as a tendency to multiply.

Surber adds that Pelosi is at least as bad and calls this Pelosi's Little Big Horn:

Democrats have discovered something worse than having a septuagenarian as president: having an octogenarian as House speaker.

...and...

The vote was yanked after it became obvious that House Democratic leaders didn't have enough support to clear the bill and send it to Biden's desk. With a three-vote margin for error in the 220-212 chamber, Pelosi had predicted success and tried brushing aside the sizable hurdles before her."

The Democrats are in the biggest political battle of their lives — against each other.

Pelosi is in LaLaLand.

She said, "I'm only envisioning taking it up and winning it. You cannot tire, you cannot concede. This is the fun part."

We can add that she gets to be Custer.

What we have here is the implosion of the Democrats' last-stance vaunted leaders, against a stable of idiots — people like Kamala Harris, who can't get a single caucus vote in Iowa, and guys like Pete Buttigieg, who bomb with black voters, plus the crazed leftist lunatics of the Squad.  Biden and Pelosi were billed as the great unifiers of the left — and now it's obvious they aren't.  They imagined themselves to be monarchs, or dictators, commanding the takeover of the economy.  Now they're just the party of idiots and lunatics scattered in all places.  Leadership?  No, just hubris.  We all know what happened to the dinosaurs.

Image: PxHere, CC0 public domain.

To comment, you can find the MeWe post for this article here.