Editorial: The coming test for progressive hard-liners in Congress

Last week's down-to-the-wire battle within the Democratic Party over a $1.2 trillion infrastructure bill exposed a curious, perhaps even dangerous truth about the mechanics of governing a democratic republic.

Although the legislation received overwhelming support from both parties in the Senate nearly two months ago, negotiations stumbled in the House, bogged down by hard-line progressives who, aside from wanting even more infrastructure spending, are adamant in their demands for a separate second initiative for $2 trillion in social spending. Ultimately, the shellacking Democrats took in Tuesday's elections pushed enough congressmen to relent and at least support the infrastructure compromise on the promise that they'll get to vote on social spending by next Monday.

As we noted Sunday, many of the foot draggers hold the puzzling view that what voters, particularly in Virginia and New Jersey, were telling them is that they would rather have Republican senators and governors than restrained Democratic federal spending. That bizarre logic is even more ominous as the promised Nov. 15 deadline for a social spending bill approaches. That bill was carved out of Biden's original $3.5 trillion Build Back Better agenda when it became obvious that the full package could not garner strong, never mind bipartisan, support.

By splitting the legislation in two, lawmakers were able to give hope to at least the infrastructure side that almost everyone agrees deserves attention. Now, progressives in the House seem determined to hold up the social side of the program if they don't get all they want. They seem unaware that their strategy could lead to the other party winning big a year from now - scuttling all their hopes.

This my-way-or-the-highway thinking has put a life-threatening strain on both parties. Democrats need look no farther than across the aisle to see what it does to a political organization and consider its portent for the country. We wrote on Sunday about what we see as misguided interpretations of the Tuesday primaries generally. The specific challenge facing progressive Democrats in the coming week is recognition that tender majority control over the machinery of government is far from a mandate to reshape the country - no more than the same circumstance for Republicans was a mandate for hard-line conservatism four years ago.

Democrats in Congress, and Republicans to a degree as well, will face a reckoning less than a week from now. Americans have made it clear that they are eager for certain changes, can be comfortable with certain others and absolutely do not want still others. Those who naively think a single legislative victory will certify their vision for all time risk not only the loss of some elements of the vision but more profoundly the loss of it all in the long term.