Can Democrats hold together? Biden's agenda depends on it

WASHINGTON (AP) — It’s one of House Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s favorite sayings, a guidepost for Democrats in trying times: "Our diversity is our strength. Our unity is our power.”

But as Democrats try to usher President Joe Biden's expansive federal government overhaul into law, it's the party's diversity of progressive and conservative views that's pulling them apart.

And only by staying unified does their no-votes-to-spare majority have any hope of pushing his rebuilding agenda into law.

Biden will set traveling to Michigan on Tuesday to speak directly to the American people on his vision: It's time to tax big business and the wealthy and invest that money into child care, health care, education and tackling climate change — what he sees as some of the nation's most pressing priorities.

Together, Biden, Pelosi and other Democrats are entering a highly uncertain time, the messy throes of legislating, in what will now be a longer-haul pursuit that could stretch for weeks, if not months, of negotiations.

“Let me just tell you about negotiating: At the end, that’s when you really have to weigh in,” Pelosi said recently. “You cannot tire. You cannot concede.”

“This,” she added on a day when negotiations would stretch to midnight, “this is the fun part.”

The product — or the colossal failure to reach a deal — will define not only the first year of Biden's presidency, but the legacy of Pelosi and a generation of lawmakers in Congress, with ramifications for next year’s midterm elections. At stake is not only the scaled-back $3.5 trillion plan, but also the slimmer $1 trillion public works bill that is now stalled, intractably linked to the bigger bill.

As Democrats in Congress regroup, having blown Pelosi's self-imposed Friday deadline for passing legislation in the House...