Supreme Court and Joe manchin tighten Biden political straitjacket.. [Yes from cnn!]

Both the premise and promise of Joe Biden's presidency and a possibly brief Democratic grip on Washington are suddenly on the line, as the legacy of past electoral disappointments and harsh realities of power suddenly converge.

In the seven-month span of Biden's term, this is the worst of times for Democrats. A stroke-of-midnight eclipse of Constitutional abortion rights in Texas that shocked liberals, a new threat from moderate Democratic Sen. Joe Manchin to Biden's vast congressional agenda and the President's own stumbles in Afghanistan dragged this White House to its lowest moment yet.
Friday brought its own series of bad news for the President in the form of a disappointing August jobs report -- only 235,000 jobs were added to the economy last month, far off the estimates of 728,000 or more -- and General Motors' announcement that it is shutting down production at most of its plants in North America for a week or two as the microchip shortage becomes a crisis.
Add in the Republican Party's expanding assault on voting rights and a looming fight over raising government borrowing levels, and Democrats face a struggle to repay the faith of their 2020 voters. And that's without horrendous tests from a pandemic that is again filling hospitals, targeting unvaccinated Americans -- including, increasingly, kids who have been left waiting on regulators -- and looking likely to dog the White House deep into midterm election year.

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