The day before Joe Manchin made his thunderbolt announcement of the new Inflation Reduction Act, I had a conversation with one of the Democratic Party’s top communications strategists. Jim Manley – who served as senior communications advisor and spokesman for then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid – walked me through the question of whether all this wrangling over President Biden’s economic agenda had been all negative, or whether Senator Manchin had actually helped steer Democrats ultimately to a better place.
In the interview, you can hear Jim hint that there’s some news coming, and his analysis of what’s happened over the past year sounds even more prescient and on-point now that we know what’s emerged in recent days. A fascinating discussion about negotiating, finding compromise, and trying to create a coherent message for a party that is frequently all over the place.
