CLAY: Now we start to think about impact going forward. It’s worth noting that Joe Biden and the Biden administration is not speaking at all. They flew back after being overseas. Biden, as recently as yesterday in Scotland, was saying he expected for McAuliffe to win in Virginia.

Kamala Harris was arguing whatever happened in 2021 would set the table for 2022 and 2024, one of the few things that I think she’s gotten right, and Ron DeSantis is now calling the Joe Biden administration “the Brandon administration.” Listen to this. The branding of the Biden administration can’t get any worse, and I think Democrats are aware that they’re spinning rapidly towards an electoral disaster. Here’s DeSantis earlier today.

DESANTIS: If you look at what’s going on with some of the big corporations, with their woke agenda, when you look at the Biden — the Brandon administration — in terms of what —

CROWD: (cheers and laughter) Let’s go, Brandon!

CLAY: I spoke last night, Buck, at a mothers event in Williamson County, my home county here in Tennessee, and the crowd erupted in a “Let’s go, Brandon” cheer too. What that represents is the incompetence that the Biden administration has had put upon itself, and I really don’t see any way, Buck, looking forward how they climb out of this.

A part of me thinks the Democrats may try and rush through the reconciliation bill as well as infrastructure because they’re aware that they’re not going to have any control over anything for the next three years and they’re just gonna take it on the chin and try to get something through now. That’s not the rational choice in terms of trying to build for 2022. But they might have gotten such a shellacking that they’re convinced there’s nothing they can do to stop the red tide from overwhelming them, and they just try to use whatever limited power they have now. I don’t think they have a lot of good options.

BUCK: What are they gonna do if they lose even one part of the Congress? If they lose a majority, let’s say, in the House, which I think is… I mean, the oddsmakers, whatever it shows now, who really cares. But I mean, it’s already likely that the Republicans will take it back and they might take it back by, who knows, 20 or 30 seats. And in that situation, what do the Democrats have? Oh, remember, Barack Obama, when he was president for eight years would go around Congress.

He would use his pen and his phone. We also have a different Supreme Court now, and we don’t have a president who has the political capital within his own party to get away with that kind of stuff, I think, because what you’re gonna see is a Biden administration that is gonna be stuck because the hard left won’t allow them to make any real concessions to the center.

Triangulation, I think, for this Biden White House, is not a possibility because there will be such a revolt from within the Democrat left socialist wing of the party which is increasingly the vanguard. It’s not like its off on its own and no one pays attention to it, right? The Squad, these people have real resonance within the Democrat Party who are far left and so they’re realizing right now, you know, the first year is a year to get stuff done.

Clay, what did they get done? What happened for the Democrats in this first year of the Biden administration compared to Trump? I remember, you remember first year of the Trump administration. Yeah, there was all the Russia collusion insanity, but in terms of what Trump was doing, people were psyched about it. We’re saying, “It’s a great year!”

The economy was roaring, things felt like it was really picking up and moving along well. I don’t know what Biden’s move is here other than to be Hidin’ Biden in the basement, and he may spend the second year of the administration — yeah, he’ll squint into the cameras and talk a little bit about “jobs, investments and jobs,” the same stuff he’s been doing for 40 years. But here. Look at this guy and say, “He really just needs a blanket across his knees and some apple sauce. This is just not working.”

CLAY: There’s no doubt. And that’s why I think there’s gonna be two divergent arguments that are taking place right now in the Democrat Party. In fact, I guarantee you this is what the argument’s gonna be on Capitol Hill. The progressives, Buck, are going to say the reason why we lost is because we didn’t pass infrastructure and because we didn’t pass the build back America agenda. The moderates are going to say, “The reason why we lost is because we’re trying to pass infrastructure and the build back America plan and people don’t like what we’re trying to do.”

So the moderates are gonna say, “If we pass this, it’s going to lead us off the cliff.” The liberals, the progressives are going to say, “If we don’t pass this, it’s going to lead us off the cliff.” The internal civil war, to me, is just exacerbated to a larger degree based on the results that we got here. I tend to believe the Manchin world is correct and that what they need to do is maybe pass infrastructure and just sit back and not even try anything else, but I don’t know that’s gonna win.

BUCK: Let me just say this also because the way this is all framed by the media is totally wrong, and this has come up. We were having our discussion. If you missed it, go back, listen to Clay and Buck podcast wherever you get your podcast — the iHeart app is a great do it — in the first hour of the show, we talked with Senator Rubio, and I said to him, I said, “This notion that the Democrats have a mandate for any of the kind of things that they’re talk about here…”

With the massive spending and the expansion of the welfare state and the Green New Deal stuff and universal pre-K and all this, I mean, the truth is the system as it’s set up is working insofar as there is basically gridlock. It should be in gridlock. We have a 50-50 Senate. We have a handful of Democrat advantage seats in the House, and we got a Biden administration with no real vision other than spend more money.

Of course the progressives, just like the commies, always gonna say, “Real progressivism has never been tried. That’s why we’re having the problems we had in the election that just happened last night.” But, Clay, there shouldn’t be transformational. There should be, right now, a rethinking of what the Democrats believe they should be pushing, what they should be pushing for. And instead, of they act like they’ve got a mandate! There’s no mandate for Joe Biden.

CLAY: You’re exactly right. The challenge is there’s never gonna be a mandate for Joe Biden, and that’s where the Democrats are sitting back right now kind of caught in that debate because the reality is, if they don’t pass it now, they’re not going to be able to pass it next year because they’re gonna lose the House’ they may well lose the Senate. If Virginia is a predictor of where things are gonna go, they’re gonna lose both and they’re gonna lose both substantially.

BUCK: Do you worry at all, though, that maybe Manchin’s moderation on the part…? Let’s say Manchin gets his way. They’re gonna pass something because if they pass nothing they might as well not even show up.

CLAY: His idea is there’s gonna be infrastructure and then a pause.

BUCK: Right. If he gets his way, though, is he actually saving the Democrats from themselves, despite what they may think? I worry that that may… Essentially, by reading the room, by taking the temperature of the American people, Manchin and Sinema at some level are preventing the Democrat Party from going over the cliff like lemmings.

CLAY: Well, it’s a good point. Now, Manchin, though, I think is gonna let them hang themselves because his argument has been, “Let’s do infrastructure. Let’s pause on the rest. If you guys believe the American public supports all these other things, run on it for 2022.” I think the Democrats are going to run on a far-left agenda in 2022. I don’t think they can help themselves, and I think they’re gonna get absolutely destroyed in 2022.

And then they’ll have, like, their come-to-Jesus moment where they have to decide, “What kind of nominee are we going to pick for 2024?” And, by the way, it’s a big decision Republicans are gonna have to make, too, because what’s Trump gonna do? How is the Republican 2024 sort of calculus gonna play out? What is the roster of potential candidates gonna look like?

I think it’s such an utterly fascinating time to contemplate, but what we do know is we’ve set the table now for a… I saw Meghan McCain call it this — and I thought it was pretty funny — “a red wedding,” for those of us who follow Game of Thrones. It’s not a red tide, it’s a red wedding, and the Democrats are gonna be the victims if you watch Game of Thrones.

BUCK: Still haunted by that episode, by the way.

CLAY: Yeah, it’s a tough episode.