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Spokane, Washington  Est. May 19, 1883

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By Henry Olsen Washington Post

Many moderate House Democrats surely voted for the Build Back Better bill on Friday with serious misgivings. They know in their guts they are likely walking a political plank for their party – and they’re right.

Forget polls that show many elements of the plan are popular. Lots of discrete items poll well before campaigns against them start in earnest, as anyone who’s ever watched opposition to ballot initiatives can attest. People often like ideas that give them something they value, as this bill does – for example, enhanced child tax credits and child care subsidies. But they change their mind when they consider costs or other consequences. Campaigns matter, and the campaign against BBB hasn’t even really begun.

That moment starts today, the day after almost all House Democrats have committed themselves to this legislation. That means they will be vulnerable to attacks on every part of it – not just the most popular items. Every time Democrats tout its supposed benefits, Republicans will tout the overall cost and special interest breaks nestled away in the bill. Members in swing seats can expect to see a lot of GOP attack ads featuring the billions of dollars in subsidies for electric bicycles and “tree equity” that BBB includes.

They’re also doing this without assurance that the bill will become law. Its fate in the evenly divided Senate remains up in the air. Moderate Democrats there have serious concerns about many of the House’s measures. Sen. Joe Manchin III, D-W.Va., is still publicly in favor of a cool-down period to see if inflation heats up before considering the bill’s passage, and many House priorities, such as paid family leave, are believed to be dead on arrival in the upper house. If Senate Democrats can coalesce and back a bill – and that’s a big if – it will likely be significantly different from the package cobbled together and thrust out the door by the House. House Democrats may not like what comes back.

Democratic moderates are also giving away their party’s 90-plus-year political ace in the hole: tarnishing Republicans as the party of the rich. That moniker, which stuck during the Great Depression, when Republicans opposed relief measures for the unemployed or to rejuvenate the economy, kept the GOP from majority status for decades. The enhanced deduction for state and local taxes, known as the SALT cap, pushed by some Democrats from high-tax states, throws that out the window. Democrats alone will be responsible for giving these hundreds of billions of dollars to the nation’s rich and ultrarich. No member voting for the bill today will be able to skirt responsibility for this needless subsidy to the McMansion set.

Democratic strategists say none of this will matter once people hear about the measure’s details. Those with long memories will recall they heard this argument before: The Obama administration in early 2010 debated whether to push forward with Obamacare as public opposition mounted. Progressives said the public would turn around once the bill passed and that the president could campaign in its favor. They won the battle for Barack Obama’s mind, but they decisively lost the political war as Republicans gained 63 House seats.

The 2010 Democratic wipeout virtually eliminated the party’s support in the rural, White South. That wipeout also set in motion the movement of White, noncollege-educated Americans beyond the South, a party mainstay since 1932, into the GOP. The coming rout, partially fueled by BBB’s massive overreach, could push Hispanics and many moderate suburbanites on a similar path. Moderate Democrats either know or suspect this, yet they will still toe the line and sacrifice their futures on the altar of party orthodoxy. To paraphrase Mr. T, I pity the fools.

Their likely fate is reminiscent of the Democrats who walked the plank in 2009 to push the Democrats’ climate change bill, the Waxman-Markey Act, into the Senate. Even though 44 Democrats opposed the bill, at least 22 members who voted for it went down in defeat. Many of those represented marginal or GOP-leaning seats, but they couldn’t or wouldn’t say no to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif. – even though the bill was never seriously considered by the Senate and was dead by the following year.

Someday, Democrats will question their sharp leftward shift in recent years, but today is not that day. Instead, Democratic moderates will put on a good face for the cameras, back their party’s march into the minority and simply go down with the already-sinking ship.

Henry Olsen is a Washington Post columnist and a senior fellow at the Ethics and Public Policy Center.