!['A recipe for absolute destruction': Democrats scramble to avoid electoral blowback after Manchin halts Biden agenda](https://cdn.cnn.com/cnnnext/dam/assets/210420124249-us-capitol-dome-0413-super-tease.jpg)
'A recipe for absolute destruction': Democrats scramble to avoid electoral blowback after Manchin halts Biden agenda
CNN
It's exactly the scenario Democrats had worked for months to avoid -- but now find themselves confronting.
Vulnerable members were forced to cast a tough vote in an already daunting election year. And now, they are left with nothing to show for it.
With Sen. Joe Manchin effectively wielding a veto over President Joe Biden's agenda, House Democrats are now fuming at the prospects that their vote last month to pass the Build Back Better bill will be all for naught, having made scores of promises to voters only to have them all go unfulfilled.
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Amid Democrats’ shock and bickering over how much to respond to President Donald Trump is a deeper question rippling through leaders across the Capitol and across the country: How much should they rely on the same institutional and procedural maneuvers they used during the first Trump term, and how much are they willing to wield their own wrecking balls?
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In less than a month in office the Trump administration has simultaneously dismantled foreign aid programs that support fragile democracies abroad and put on leave federal workers who protect US elections at home in a move that current and former officials say abandons decades of American commitments to democracy.
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Sen. Mitch McConnell was a generational force for the Republican Party — using procedural tactics and political will to stymie much of former President Barack Obama’s agenda, hand President Donald Trump key first-term political victories and deliver a 6-3 conservative Supreme Court majority. Now he’s the odd man out.