Democrats Stare Into the Abyss

Since mid-summer, Democrats have been trapped in a downward spiral of declining approval ratings for President Joe Biden, rising public anxiety about the country’s direction, and widening internal divisions over the party’s legislative agenda. The next few weeks will likely determine whether they have bottomed out and can begin to regain momentum before next year’s midterm elections.

Roughly since the rise of the Delta variant sent COVID-19 caseloads soaring again, the White House and congressional Democrats have faced a debilitating slog of dashed hopes and diminished expectations. Weeks of negotiation over the party’s massive economic-development and social-safety-net bill have mostly continued that story, with Democratic groups lamenting the loss of programs that are being lopped off to meet the objections primarily of two centrist Democratic senators, Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Kyrsten Sinema of Arizona—the same duo whose resistance to changing the Senate filibuster rule has so far stymied the party’s hopes of passing legislation establishing a nationwide floor for voting rights. Amid all of these reversals, anxiety is rising among Democrats about whether they can hold the governorship in next month’s election in Virginia—a state Biden carried last year by 10 points.

But after months