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 | Email Max Progressives were frustrated with President JOE BIDEN even before Sen. JOE MANCHIN (D-W.V.) knifed the Build Back Better act on live television Sunday. Voting rights legislation appears to be going nowhere. Student loan collection is expected to re-start early next year. Some of the Trump administration’s border policies remain in effect. And the $6 trillion social spending and climate action bill Democrats had once envisioned had already been whittled down to less than $2 trillion over a decade, leaving many progressive priorities on the cutting room table. Now, with the sting of this latest BBB setback still fresh, progressive lawmakers and activists are openly venting about the White House — and some are even entertaining the idea of a primary challenge to Biden in 2024, if he stands by his plans to run for re-election. Asked if she thought there’d be such a challenge, former state senator NINA TURNER, a close ally of Sen. BERNIE SANDERS (I-Vt.), told West Wing Playbook: “Without a doubt.” “I think the movement is going to cry out for that,” she said. “We played nice in 2020, we played nice in 2021, and what did we get for it?” Asked if she would consider challenging Biden, Turner declined to comment. This may all sound like a bit of deja vu. Sanders himself openly entertained the idea of primarying BARACK OBAMA in 2012, out of a sense of frustration over Obama’s embrace of austerity politics, and the continuation of the Bush tax cuts. That went nowhere (in fact, it ended up harming Sanders four years later when he did run for president). And any primary challenge of Biden would likely be unsuccessful. Even as Biden’s overall approval ratings have dipped, around 80 percent of Democrats still approve of the job he’s doing. Turner also ran for Congress earlier this year and lost, in part because of her public criticism of Biden in the past. But someone like Turner, a dynamic speaker on the stump who often opened Sanders’ presidential campaign rallies and would likely be able to raise money online, would at the very least be an unwelcome annoyance for the Biden team. The talk of primary challenges is also a symptom of the broader pent-up anger at the current administration among some progressives. After being pleasantly surprised with some of the Biden administration’s personnel moves and the large American Rescue Plan that passed in the spring, many have grown impatient. “I think right now that leaders and Democratic leadership have a very large number of tools at their disposal — the president, particularly — and it’s really about time that we take the kid gloves off and we start using them to govern for working families in this country,” Rep. ALEXANDRIA OCASIO-CORTEZ (D-N.Y.) told “Morning Joe” this morning. “It’s not a surprise that there’s a lot of frustration,” said progressive operative CLAIRE SANDBERG, Sanders’ 2020 national organizing director. “This entire year, Biden has been telling progressives ‘Trust me. I have a strategy to get this done.’ And here we are.” EZRA LEVIN, the co-founder and co-executive director of the progressive grassroots group Indivisible who has been critical of Biden in the past, lamented how, “on voting rights, he calls it the worst crisis since the civil war, but he hasn’t lifted a finger.” In a statement, White House rapid response director MIKE GWIN said, “President Biden ran on and won a historic victory with a progressive agenda focused on tackling issues that had been left unaddressed for decades. There’s still more work to do, but we’ve made remarkable progress since then, turning around the economy, vaccinating 200 million Americans, halving childhood poverty, confirming a historic number of federal judges, and passing legislation to jumpstart the electrical vehicle market and rid our country of lead pipes. The President is committed to building on that success, including by getting Build Back Better done.” The pushing, prodding, and bashing from the left is also a sign of the unwieldy coalition Biden is trying to keep together in the absence of a shared and present common enemy in DONALD TRUMP. Biden allies feel the president is doing his best given the realities of slim margins in Congress. Some detractors note, however, that Biden is at least partly responsible for those margins given his weak coattails in the 2020 election. While Manchin is taking much of the incoming from the left, there is frustration about how deferential the White House treated him for so long. “Even after all that coddling, hand-holding and butt-kissing, Joe Manchin is being Joe Manchin,” Turner said. “The progressive flank–both elected and grassroots thought leaders–have been the president’s true partners compared to the corporatist wing. The fear that the progressives would be the ones to hold up the agenda has not been the case, even in our disappointment.” As for Build Back Better’s prospects in the new year, she said: “Even if they do pass something, it’s gonna be a shell of what the people need.” OUT OF OFFICE: West Wing Playbook won’t publish from Friday, Dec. 24 through Friday, Dec. 31. We’ll be back Monday, Jan. 3. We hope absence makes the heart grow fonder. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you SANDRA E. FORD, special assistant to the president for public health and science ? 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. Or you can text/Signal Alex at 8183240098. | 
