There’s probably nothing more predictable in an election loss than this—conservative Democrats with a Politico reporter on speed-dial rushing to kneecap their progressive colleagues:

Interestingly enough, that’s not the takeaway from Third Way, the longtime policy group friend of the Blue Dog Democrats. “The months of in-fighting and sausage-making must come to an end,” Matt Bennett, executive vice president of the group, said in a statement. “We must pass these two historic bills and then explain what they will do to create jobs, cut taxes, and help working families afford the essentials.” 

“Three cheers for Third Way” is a sentiment you might never expect to show up on the front page of Daily Kos, but when they’re right, they’re right. The sabotage of President Joe Biden’s agenda has not been coming from the left of the Democratic congress, but from the right.

“Republicans are intent on using the lessons they learned in Virginia, including the power of cynical distortion and outright lying about cultural and race issues, to try to take back Congress next year,” Bennett continued. “The dangers of the anti-democratic, Trumpified GOP taking control are enormous. Democrats must show that they are the mainstream party of the Joe Biden who won the primary and the general election. That’s the only way back.”

There is no aid and comfort to the Sabotage Squad from there, so they’ll have to keep relying on Politico. Funnily enough, the Democrats willing to go on the record there aren’t falling for the “Dems in disarray” trap. Even California Rep. Scott Peters, who has been fighting on behalf of PhRMA to make sure Medicare can’t negotiate prescription drug prices, wouldn’t play. Not for the record, anyway. “The picture has been of Democrats sparring amongst ourselves. That’s probably not the best face to put out,” he said. “I hope that there’s more of working toward agreement, like we had today, than openly sparring with each other.”

“People in my district don’t care what happens in the Virginia governor’s race,” said Pennsylvania Rep. Matt Cartwright, a Democrat, who eked out a win in a Trump-supporting northeast district last fall. “A year from now, what happened in the Virginia governor’s race will be a distant, dim memory.”

That’s not going to keep the conservative Democrats from carping off the record to a Fox News reporter. Chad Pergram tweets that they’re “fired up this morning after the losses in Virginia,” and  that one tells him “Hopefully progressives will get the wake-up call.” 

They’re still pushing to decouple the hard infrastructure bill from the budget reconciliation that holds all of the things that will actually help people so that they can continue to delay, delay, delay that bill. That’s the tactic we’ve been seeing from the House Sabotage Squad and their Senate cheerleaders, Joe Manchin and Kyrsten Sinema, for months. 

The not-conservative members of the Democratic Congress, however, aren’t falling for it. They’re not fighting the linkage of the bill, and they’re still pressing for action.

There are many reasons for the loss in Virginia. When it comes down to it, most of them are because Republicans once again so skillfully tapped into fear and racism and the ongoing pandemic zeitgeist. It was masks and vaccines in schools and critical race theory and transphobia, not paid family leave and carbon offsets.

No one was voting for Manchin or Sinema in Virginia on Tuesday. Shame on any Democrat who tries to exploit that by further sabotaging not just their colleagues, but their president.