We spend a lot of time in the weeds of congressional negotiations on the
major legislation President Joe Biden, with some bipartisan help, is
slowly moving through the system. At times it has all seemed pretty
normal: 69 votes for an infrastructure package in the Senate that was
hailed by Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, a less tidy but still pretty
typical process of wrangling Democrats together for the much more
partisan climate and social welfare reconciliation bill. Even Tuesday’s
results in the off-year election in Virginia, which sent a message to
the new president about overreach, were perfectly in line with recent
history. 

But there were two stories Tuesday that reminded us of how, outside of
the (relatively) routine sausage-making on Capitol Hill, some enormously
worrisome undercurrents remain in American politics.

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Raghu Manavalan is the host of POLITICO's Playbook.
Jenny Ament is the senior producer for POLITICO Audio. 
Irene Noguchi is the executive producer of POLITICO Audio.