Will they look good losing?

Back when I worked in the Reagan Administration, Commerce Secretary Malcolm Baldrige, my boss, would say of the then-right wing of the Republican Party: “They like to look good losing.”

That’s because those folks would have rather died on the battlefield clinging to their most extreme beliefs rather than compromise with the moderates in the party, or the Democrats.

Today, the same can be said in the Democratic Party. Progressives are holding any compromise hostage while they cling, at least publicly, to their $3.5 trillion package of spending and programs to revamp American society. Every day we read about the “talks” within the Democratic Party to try to find a compromise on the package that would likely be anywhere from $1.5 trillion to $2.5 trillion. Republicans have opted out of negotiating at all because they want nothing to do in any way with “helping” Democrats. Their eyes are not on legislating but on winning next year’s elections.

Progressives in the Democratic Party were known as “liberals” in my day but changed the label, I guess, because “progressive” sounds more acceptable.

For those of us not inside the Democratic talks, we have no idea what’s really being discussed. We just know that the progressives spokesmen are clinging to $3.5 trillion awaiting on Democratic Sens. Joe Manchin of West Virginia and Krysten Sinema of Arizona to tell them what they really want to support the package.