Always reading the same script

Facts are never, ever allowed to intrude upon hard pundit law:

This bears just literally no relationship to reality whatsoever. Let’s review:

• The idea that the progressive bloc in Congress — led by figures like Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, AOC, and Pramila Jayapal doesn’t care about bread-and-butter economic policy issues is laughably stupid.
• The vast majority of the party has agreed to an ambitious package of generally popular economic initiatives. Leadership has also been willing to scale down these initiatives to meet the putative asks of the marginal votes.
• The reason that the reconciliation bill hasn’t passed has literally nothing to do with trans activists or police abolitionists or any other group. It’s because a handful of conservative Democrats — most notably, Joe Manchin, Kyrsten Sinema, and Josh Gottheimer — are total fucking clowns who to the extent they have any agenda at all beyond just sabotaging the party and the Biden administration have the top priority of preserving Donald Trump’s tax cuts for the rich (or, in Gottheimer’s case, saying that Trump didn’t cut taxes for the rich enough.) This is, in addition to being bad on the merits, not “popularism.”
• Manchin’s stated reason for backing out of the deal this time — that because of concerns about inflation and the deficit he can’t..support tax increases or culminate legislation — rank with anti-abortion activists explaining why some abortions aren’t actually abortions at all for pure incoherence. Other people in the party are criticizing him because he’s obviously acting in bad faith.
• And, needless to say, Manchin and Sinema have de facto vetoes because no Republican senator would even for a second support climate legislation or a modest expansion of the welfare state or (God forbid) even a penny of more taxes on the rich.

Anyway, if you want to blame someone for the inaction of Congress, there you go. Progressive groups aren’t the problem here and blaming them is the laziest take imaginable.