With help from Allie Bice and Daniel Payne Welcome to POLITICO’s West Wing Playbook, your guide to the people and power centers in the Biden administration. Did someone forward this to you? Subscribe here! Have a tip? Email us at westwingtips@politico.com. Speaking in Tulsa earlier this week, President JOE BIDEN did something wholly out of character: He attacked two members of his own party. Actually, “attack” probably overstates it. It was more like a chiding, and, let’s be honest, a gentle one at that. Biden didn’t actually mention the two moderate Senate Democrats — JOE MANCHIN of West Virginia and KYRSTEN SINEMA of Arizona — by name. He merely noted that two members of his party, who reside in the Senate, often vote with Republicans. And then, the next day, press secretary JEN PSAKI insisted he wasn’t actually calling out Manchin or Sinema, just relaying the news commentary he’d heard around how those two operate. In that way, he’s like DONALD TRUMP, who was fond of repeating what he saw on cable news. For Bidenologists, it was all pretty familiar. The president tends to political relationships the way botanists tend to rare plants: with extreme care. He doesn’t like uprooting or disrupting or depriving them of the ingredients they need. He is a soft power pol who believes he can work with and win over the most hardened son-of-a-btich in all of government. For practitioners of political hard power, it’s a bit baffling. Good chunks of the president’s agenda hang in balance, and it’s increasingly unclear if Biden’s powers of persuasion can salvage them. For these folks, it is long past time for a bit of intimidation, a dash of arm twisting, or even just a more aggressive framing of the debate. “The thing Biden could do is make a much more forceful case about ... what it means for Manchin and Sinema’s constituents, in stark terms. That either Arizona and West Virginia will receive this or receive nothing,” said WALEED SHAHID, communications director of Justice Democrats, a left-wing advocacy group. “Forcing the conversation away from so-called bipartisan processes and more toward the outcomes of the legislation would make the stakes much starker.” There are a variety of explanations for why the White House hasn’t gotten more aggressive yet. The most obvious one is that the brass-knuckled approach might not work; that threatening funds or political support as a means of winning a vote really is just Green Lantern-ism. Manchin, in particular, seems immune to threats. He’s from a state where he needs to worry more about pissing off Republican voters than Democrats. Showing some public breaks with the president may, in his estimation, endear him more to those voters than touting that he got a bigger chunk of the infrastructure spending pie….so long as he gets some chunk of that pie. As for that pie, Manchin has backup options. His perch on the Senate Appropriations Committee gives him power to ensure he can still get money back to his state. “He is an appropriator so has more tools at his disposal than a rank-and-file member to fill his own cup,” said TODD WEBSTER, a longtime party operative and former chief of staff to Sen. CHRIS COONS (D-Del.). But another reason Biden hasn’t gone down the hard power path is that it’s not in his character. JIM MANLEY, who saw Biden’s operating style up close as a top staffer to the late Sen. TED KENNEDY (D-Mass.) and former Senate Majority Leader HARRY REID (D-Nev.), said the president has the capacity to play hard ball — having honed those skills on the Judiciary Committee in the 80s when “fierce ideological battles” took place. “But he has survived on the politics of persuasion,” Manley added. “I’m not sure hard ball tactics are his forte.” Webster agreed. Going after Manchin and Sinema, he said, was “the first time I can recall him being even remotely critical.” In that sense — like many others — Biden is very much not like Trump. The former president took the concept of LBJ-style power politics to a performative artform. When then-Sen. DEAN HELLER (R-Nev.) was wavering on supporting Obamacare repeal legislation, Trump privately told him he’d lose his nomination for re-election if he didn’t get on board. Publicly at the White House, Trump not-so-obliquely threatened the senator, saying he knew Nevada “very well” and that the people there would “appreciate” if Heller backed the ACA-repeal plan. For good measure, America First Policies, a pro-Trump outside group, announced a $1 million ad campaign against Heller over the issue. Heller eventually found his way to supporting the repeal and America First Policies pulled the ads. In the lead up to the election, Trump held three separate rallies for him. But Obamacare repeal failed. And Heller lost his election by 5 percentage points. Do you work in the Biden administration? Are you in touch with the White House? Are you KAITLYN HOBBS DEMERS? 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. You can also reach Alex and Theo individually. | 
