Would that it were so. Unfortunately, Joe Biden will be president for a while longer than the next few days, and his presidency passed its expiration date in late August.

Nevertheless, both CNN and CBS report that House Democrats got a “I don’t think it’s hyperbole” pitch from President Hyperbole this morning:

.@majorcbs reports that Thursday morning, President Biden met with House Democrats and said the fate of "the entire Biden presidency will be decided in the next couple of days by what House and Senate Democrats do" on his Build Back Better agenda https://t.co/AZoA19a9K9 pic.twitter.com/1pS5puJi34

— CBS News (@CBSNews) October 28, 2021

Biden to House Dems, per source. “I don’t think it’s hyperbole to say that the House and Senate majorities and my presidency will be determined by what happens in the next week.”

— Manu Raju (@mkraju) October 28, 2021

Perhaps Biden’s confused about the political system in which he operates. In a parliamentary system, a failure of such a bill as the bipartisan infrastructure bill would touch off a new election. In our system, it just demonstrates incompetence ahead of the next election cycle, at which point voters can choose to punish it. And in this case, they surely will.

But even in that context, the comment makes little sense. The collapse of Biden’s social-engineering efforts won’t come at the hands of House and Senate Democrats as much as it will from his own fumbling of the effort. Biden tried selling this framework proposal today as some sort of historic marker, but it’s hard to sell that while moving in reverse:

BIDEN: "I think we have a historic—I *know* we have a historic economic framework." pic.twitter.com/ICxaelR3T8

— Townhall.com (@townhallcom) October 28, 2021

If this truly qualifies as a “historic framework,” then this is where the White House should have started. It was patently obvious that Biden couldn’t possibly push the original bloated progressive cheeseburger of the reconciliation bill through a 50/50 Senate even under reconciliation. Biden and his team should have done the heavy lifting up front to get a proposal that could win support from all fifty Senate Democrats — as well as ensure that they wouldn’t lose more than the three House Democrats that provide their margin in the lower chamber. That would have managed expectations properly, not just for the media but for progressives who got repeatedly encouraged by Biden to go big.

Now, Biden has literally cut their “go big” effort in half, still doesn’t have support from all 50 Democrats, and wants to argue that it’s still “historic.” Good luck selling that to progressives now. In fact, here’s the latest to tell Biden to pound sand:

“Hell no on BIF,” @RepRashida tells reporters as she leaves a meeting of progressives

— Nolan D. McCaskill (@NolanDMcCaskill) October 28, 2021

That’s why it’s not hyperbole to say that the Biden presidency’s failure is already set in stone. That’s not because of whatever happens on BIF or reconciliation. It’s because Biden’s an incompetent executive after having been an incompetent legislator for five decades. This failure is just the predictable outcome of a Biden presidency.