WASHINGTON — It was a familiar, if excruciating, position for Democrats.
A day after pulling the plug on his party’s plans to pass a climate, energy and tax package this summer, Senator Joe Manchin III of West Virginia, the conservative-leaning Democrat who has repeatedly flirted with compromise only to scuttle his party’s highest ambitions, called in on Friday to a West Virginia radio show. Perhaps, he suggested, in another month or so, he might see his way clear to salvaging the last bits of President Biden’s domestic agenda.
There was no guarantee, of course, and the comments were only the latest instance of Mr. Manchin capitalizing on his role as a swing vote in an evenly divided Senate to dictate his party’s legislative strategy, leaving Democrats at his mercy.
This time, Democrats had had enough.
Rather than engage in another round of will-he-or-won’t-he negotiations with Mr. Manchin, Mr. Biden let it be known that he was done trying to secure his climate agenda in Congress.
Mr. Manchin’s abrupt withdrawal left Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the majority leader, jilted after months of courting a colleague whose demands and red lines seemed to shift by the day, or the latest economic projection. And it prodded many Democrats into open revolt against Mr. Manchin, blaming him for the demise of their ambitions and the last chance for their party to tackle the existential threat of climate change.
Mr. Manchin, said Representative Pramila Jayapal of Washington, the chairwoman of the Congressional Progressive Caucus, “has shown that he doesn’t know how to close a deal — or he doesn’t want to close a deal — and that you can’t trust him.”
For more than a year, Mr. Manchin, who at 74 is serving his third term in the Senate, has been situated exactly where he prefers to be: at the center of a high-stakes political and policy negotiation, with attention and speculation focused on him.
Democrats have toiled to win his vote on any piece of their once-ambitious domestic agenda, tailoring their policy moves so as not to alienate him. They have contorted themselves to suit his often-changing dictates and have scaled back their ambitions repeatedly to stay within his red lines, but they have so far come away empty-handed on their biggest priorities.
Because of Democrats’ razor-thin margin of control in the 50-50 Senate and unified Republican opposition to most of their agenda, Mr. Manchin has effective veto power over the party’s legislative strategy — and has exercised it often and unapologetically.
But while Mr. Biden and congressional Democrats have pushed for transformative policies to confront generational challenges such as climate change, Mr. Manchin, who channels the desires of his very conservative, coal-and-gas-producing state, has focused on nearer-term issues.
On Friday, he said he had told party leaders he wanted to wait another month — until inflation numbers for July were released — before he could decide on whether to act on climate change.
Understand What Happened to Biden’s Domestic Agenda
‘Build Back Better.’ Before being elected president in 2020, Joseph R. Biden Jr. articulated his ambitious vision for his administration under the slogan “Build Back Better,” promising to invest in clean energy and to ensure that procurement spending went toward American-made products.
Read More: Joe Manchin Defends Retreat on Climate and Tax Plans