Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. With Allie Bice. Send tips | Subscribe here | Email Alex | Email Tina At some point this past week, a dark realization set in among Democrats that the Biden presidency, not yet a year old, could be lost. Not failed, mind you. White House officials and allies believe they have achievements to boast about (reducing childhood poverty , for example) and more that they can do in office. But with progressives and moderates in Congress bickering over the sequencing and contours of the president’s physical and human infrastructure bills, it seemed, almost suddenly, that the window for moving generational social and economic policy was close to closed. And it left a number of top officials in a self-described panic. One House Democratic lawmaker said that on a scale of one to 10 — 10 being extremely worried about the fate of Biden’s agenda and one being supremely confident in it — he had gone from a three to a seven. And this person is a preternatural optimist. JOHN PODESTA, one of the greybeards of the Democratic Party, felt so gripped by a fear of legislative implosion that he penned a memo imploring lawmakers to resolve their differences or risk electoral annihilation. “I was worried that the sense of urgency to resolve a final deal on reconciliation was sort of lagging and that both sides thought they had more clout than they did,” he said in an interview explaining his thinking. “And while I have tremendous faith in the speaker to manage the caucus, it felt like there was a game of chicken being played on both sides and that could result in the whole thing spinning out of control and we get nothing. That would be politically disastrous and substantively disastrous.” Podesta insisted no one in the West Wing told him to pen the memo, in which he told progressives to compromise on the $3.5 trillion reconciliation bill and for moderates to recognize there’d be no infrastructure deal without a reconciliation bill too. But his fears were shortly echoed from inside 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. President JOE BIDEN’ s decision to invite House and Senate lawmakers from all ideological camps to discuss the legislative state of play was driven by a sense of surprise internally at how rigid the stalemate was. “I think a lot of people are freaking out,” said one lobbyist close to the White House. How the White House found itself in this spot has been a source of speculation for Democrats this week. One common refrain has been that the president’s team was overwhelmed by external events. Another theory holds that, having worked tirelessly to craft a bipartisan infrastructure agreement in the Senate, they didn’t have their antennae up when it came to the House. Confidence in Speaker NANCY PELOSI’s ability to see any legislative product through her chamber obscured the other reality: she only has three votes to lose. “I think the president and his weight have been very focused on the infrastructure bill,” said one House Democratic aide. “I think they were very focused on that bipartisan agreement. So when they had to turn to reconciliation and this Build Back Better plan, there wasn’t quite as much engagement. Part of the problem is when they were slated to turn to it, Afghanistan happened.” The White House, the aide said, seems more attentive now. The meetings with lawmakers this week were serious, not ceremonial. The president didn’t make demands, save that the party agree on passing both the infrastructure bill and the reconciliation package—not one or the other. On Friday, Pelosi announced that she would plow forward with votes next week on both bills. But elsewhere, the push to get those bills into law has been more alarmist. The aforementioned lobbyist said that in every recent call or Zoom with fundraisers or party officials, it’s been described as a fait accompli that Democrats will lose both chambers of Congress if the stalemate persists. “It’s so patently obvious,” the lobbyist said. Among those interviewed for this piece, Podesta expressed the most confidence that Democrats would find success — he placed the odds of passage at “better than 50/50.” The party, he reasoned, would come to its senses, if not for their own electoral hides than for the planet itself. “If we blow this chance now on climate, the national and planetary and human security consequences are incredibly grave,” he said. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you KYLE JAMES, director of digital response? We want to hear from you — and we’ll keep you anonymous: westwingtips@politico.com. Or if you want to stay really anonymous send us a tip through SecureDrop, Signal, Telegram, or Whatsapp here. | 
