| President Biden ran as a dealmaker. "To restore the soul and secure the future of America requires so much more than words," he said in his election-victory speech, "it requires the most elusive of all things in a democracy: Unity." How is he doing on that front? Biden came into office with older-school philosophies on politics and governing. He emphasized that he'd give Republicans the benefit of the doubt by assuming that, with Donald Trump out of the White House, they would be more willing to work with Democrats. Democrats scoffed. As for his own party, he felt like his primary win over the Bernie Sanderses of the world would settle the debate over how far left Democrats should be. Liberals scoffed.  In May, President Biden and Vice President Harris met with congressional leaders — Democrats and Republicans. (Evan Vucci/AP) | Now, he's taking a big interest in and investing quite a bit of time into negotiations on Capitol Hill to get his agenda done before the end of this year, before lawmakers transform into election mode for the November 2022 midterms and deals become even more elusive. With time ticking, let's look at his report card so far. Biden's TBD deals Most of his attempts at striking deals are still in progress, but if Biden can accomplish his to-do list, it would be a really big, legacy-defining moment for him and his party. - Earlier in his presidency, he corralled his party around another coronavirus stimulus package aimed at propping up the economy and speeding up the recovery.
- He's on the verge of doing something presidents for years have tried and failed to do: investing $1 trillion to repair the nation's aging infrastructure, complete with a climate change component. That bill won votes from 19 Republican senators.
- He's optimistic — sanguine at times even — that Democrats will eventually pass legislation to expand the social safety net in big ways. "We're going to get this done," he said recently. "It doesn't matter when. It doesn't matter whether it's in six minutes, six days, or six weeks. We're going to get it done."
His dealmaking struggles In legislating, almost doesn't count. That infrastructure bill is stuck in the House of Representatives, held up not by Republicans but by members of his own party. It underscores that there are some pretty major internal divisions among Democrats that Biden may have underestimated. Biden has moved significantly left on any number of issues to try to appease these liberals, but they're emboldened. Liberals have become the mainstream of the Democratic Party, writes The Post's Marianna Sotomayor. "This is, oddly, the progressives who are holding up his agenda and trying to make sure the president can fulfill that agenda," Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said. And those internal divisions are even more of a problem when you look at the social safety net/climate change spending bill that Biden wants passed; that he arguably needs passed to help his approval ratings. It will get done with only Democratic votes, and a deal for now on how much to spend ($3.5 trillion? $1.5 trillion? Somewhere in the middle?) remains elusive, let alone on what to spend that money on, write The Post's Jeff Stein and Seung Min Kim. As for Republicans, they helped Biden temporarily stave off a default and shutdown this fall, but they're promising to withhold those votes when Congress has this fight all over again in December. That's about all Biden can hope for from them. And then what about police reform, immigration, voting rights?  Advocates hold a "No More Excuses: Voting Rights Now!" rally in front of the White House recently. (Alex Wong/Getty Images) | These major issues for the Democratic Party have more or less fallen by the wayside. A deal to reform policing in America shattered in the Senate recently. Democrats' efforts to extend a path to citizenship for Dreamers has to be left out of their social spending bill for parliamentary reasons. And Democrats have coalesced around voting rights legislation, but that probably isn't going anywhere in a Republican Senate — unless they get rid of the filibuster. This is all leaving Black voters particularly disaffected, reports The Post's Cleve R. Wootson Jr. What home do Never Trumpers have in these next elections? The other side of the aisle has problems too. Anyone who thought the Republican Party would have a moment of introspection after losing the House, Senate and White House under Trump was wrong. Almost a year after his loss, Trump is the singular figure of the party right now, and his false claims that the election was stolen are fast becoming the defining feature of Republican politics. "I never conceded," he said to applause at a rally over the weekend in Iowa. (Yes, Iowa, which is the state you go to when you want to run for president. At that rally, a leading Republican senator, Chuck Grassley, introduced Trump, after earlier this year accusing Trump of "belittling and harassing" officials to overturn the election.)  Trump in Iowa on Saturday. (Dan Brouillette/Bloomberg) | Republicans who don't want Trump to be president again, or who don't want him to have any influence on the Republican Party, may have a choice to make in 2024: Trump, or Democrats? A former Trump administration official and a former Republican governor of New Jersey wrote in the New York Times today: "We are Republicans with a Plea: Elect Democrats in 2022." But the very existence of this op-ed underscores Never-Trumpers' problem. The writers are relatively little-known figures in the Republican Party. They're not current officeholders. And if Republicans win back the House of Representatives next year, it's likely that the speaker will be Kevin McCarthy, someone who voted to overturn Biden's election results along with the majority of House Republicans. | 
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