Can you say “bull***” on MSNBC? Apparently so, or Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-MN) snuck one past the time-delay goalie. The giggle really sells it, though … along with the I told you so from The Squad member on holding a vote on the bipartisan infrastructure bill first. “We all knew Senator Manchin couldn’t be trusted,” said the progressive that backed all sorts of budget gimmicks to hide the true cost of the bill she championed, and Omar wasn’t alone on that point:

"We all knew that Senator Manchin couldn't be trusted. The excuses that he just made, I think, are complete bullshit." @IlhanMN to @AliVelshi pic.twitter.com/qFQmqr1Wui

— People for Bernie (@People4Bernie) December 19, 2021

Let’s be clear: Manchin’s excuse is bullshit. The people of West Virginia would directly benefit from childcare, pre-Medicare expansion, and long term care, just like Minnesotans.

This is exactly what we warned would happen if we separated Build Back Better from infrastructure. https://t.co/dhzcSk0qUV

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) December 19, 2021

Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez (D-NY) focused her frustration on Democratic leadership.

“People can be mad at Manchin all they want, but we knew he would do this months ago,” she said. “Where we need answers from are the leaders who promised a path on BBB if BIF [the infrastructure bill] passed: Biden & Dem leaders. They chose to move BIF alone instead of w/ BBB, not Manchin. So they need to fix it.

“We, as always, are here to fight for this agenda. What matters most to us is that it gets done. But we cannot just shrug our shoulders and accept this as some Charlie Brown moment,” she added. “Our entire democracy is on the line. So we need to get back in there & get this sh*t done. Period.”

If you had “Our entire democracy is on the line and so the Senate must ignore a majority of its members to pass a bill” on your Progressive Bingo Card yesterday, congratulations. As if that weren’t self-contradictory enough, Omar also sent out a salvo on Twitter arguing that an inability to get a majority for a radical and massive spending bill meant the twilight of democracy and the advent of authoritarianism:

This is so much bigger than Manchin.

When democracies are no longer able to address their constituents’ needs and demands, authoritarians seize power. I’ve seen it time and time again.

And ours was already on life support.

— Ilhan Omar (@IlhanMN) December 19, 2021

Again, all of this “bull****” refers to the fact that Joe Biden couldn’t get 50 votes in the Senate even under reconciliation for his Build Back Better bill. And the same progressives weeping that this is how democracy dies are also now claiming that they should never have allowed a vote on a bill that did have majority approval as well as bipartisan support, in order to impose their minority ideology on America.

By golly, I believe we have found the authoritarians!

Just how dead is the BBB, anyway? Politico walks through the case for revival, but without much enthusiasm:

Some Democrats think Manchin’s Sunday bombshell was a play for leverage. We’re not sure why he’d need more leverage when he already holds all the cards, but let’s play this out.

Democrats will note that Manchin as recently as a few days ago appeared to be willing to swallow a $1.75 trillion package. It was some of the provisions in the legislation and the way his colleagues scored the overall bill that repelled him. He dismissed plans to “sunset” programs after a few years — as a way to save money on paper and pack more into BBB — as budget gimmickry, hiding BBB’s true price tag.

In theory, Democrats could alleviate that concern by ditching this entire set-up and focusing instead on funding a few programs for a full decade. … BUT CAN YOU REALLY CALL SUCH A BILL BBB?

NO YOU CAN’T, or at least that’s what Omar and her gang will say. The idea of trimming the package down to a few targeted programs with honest budgeting (or at least more honest budgeting) had been repeatedly raised by Manchin and others. Even Nancy Pelosi briefly broached the idea before getting shouted down by Omar, AOC, and their allies. The White House could get Manchin to sign onto a reconciliation plan that includes the 10-year costs for Child Tax Credits at $1.4 trillion and have $350 billion left over for smaller targeted programs. Without climate change provisions as well as a lot of other progressive agenda items in the bill, it won’t get enough Democrats to pass it in either chamber — and Republicans won’t cooperate on anything coming in reconciliation.

Politico also assesses the real problems Democrats now have rolling into the midterms:

Democrats over-promised — and they could pay politically. As our colleagues Marianne LeVine and Burgess Everett noted Sunday night, this year would seem like an extraordinary success in an alternative universe: Democrats passed a $1 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill as well as a nearly $2 trillion pandemic relief package.

But Democrats oversold their ability to deliver on just about everything else. And now they’ve got to explain to voters why they failed to uphold major campaign promises.

Even the successes are failures, however. That $2 trillion stimulus package touched off an inflationary wave of an amplitude we have not seen in 39 years. The bipartisan infrastructure package is arguably less fraught, but it only got passed with Republican help — and Omar and the Squad will dump bull**** all over it between now and the midterms as a betrayal, not a win.

All this comes back to Joe Biden and his extraordinarily incompetence, both political and executive. All he had to do was not be Donald Trump and aim for some middle-of-the-road successes in his first two years. Instead, Biden let himself be led by the nose by Omar, AOC, Pramila Jayapal, and Bernie Sanders — and has utterly wrecked his presidency, as well as the economy and God knows what else. And that’s because Biden’s always been twenty pounds of bull**** in a ten-pound bag, as Omar herself might say now. Even on MSNBC.