'The power of two': How Manchin and Sinema are blocking a new Democratic consensus

It's hard to see amid the stormy conflict with Sens. Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, but the elongated Democratic standoff over President Joe Biden's economic agenda shows how far the party consensus has moved toward a more aggressive role for government than during the presidencies of Bill Clinton or even Barack Obama.

The intractable disagreements with Manchin and Sinema about the size and scope of the economic package have produced weeks of ugly deadlock among Democrats -- and Manchin's unexpectedly harsh denunciation of the party's sweeping economic development and social safety net bill on Monday points to possibly more weeks of conflict, with no guarantee that he will ultimately support the plan and allow it to pass.

But while the continuing resistance from Manchin, and potentially Sinema, could still derail the key elements of Biden's domestic agenda, many Democrats from across the party's ideological spectrum say the process has revealed less a fundamental fissure between left and center than the challenge of coping with the unique and sometimes opaque resistance from two senators empowered with personal "veto power" by the Senateex's 50-50 split.