West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin gave the country an early Christmas present last Sunday. In one statement on “Fox News Sunday,” Manchin scuttled the Build Back Better monstrosity, effectively killing President Biden’s domestic agenda even faster than his administration abandoned Afghanistan, which effectively killed his foreign policy agenda.

And thank goodness. There has been enough commentary on BBB in the last few months that the enormity of its cost and scope are well enough known. Sen. Manchin summed it up pretty well, saying “My Democratic colleagues in Washington are determined to dramatically reshape our society in a way that leaves our country more vulnerable to the threats we face… I cannot take that risk with a staggering debt of more than $29 trillion and inflation taxes that are real and harmful to every hard-working American at the gasoline pumps, grocery stores and utility bills with no end in sight.”

Well said. The blowback, naturally, was immediate, predictable and hyperbolic – from the White House, of course, and congressional progressives, but some of the best came from some in the media. For instance, this tweet from Sam Stein, Politico’s White House editor: “A lot to process on the Manchin news but, from a substantive standpoint, it’s just objectively devastating for the planet. The last best chance at climate change legislation is gone.” Interesting interpretation of the word “objective.”

I predict that the planet will survive this decision just fine, as will working folks, especially considering that the inflation that BBB would have put into orbit is an especially pernicious tax that hammers the poor disproportionately.

The pursuit of the BBB was a startling display of political misjudgment, to say nothing of the economic myopia. The 2020 election, as has often been pointed out, was not a signal that America was ready for revolution. It was far more about weariness with the vulgar excesses of President Trump than it was an embrace of his opponents. In what should have been a good Democrat year, the Democrats only managed to carve out the slimmest House majority in recent memory, and a tied Senate. And Biden, remember, won the nomination as the moderate centrist before veering to the left.

But revolutionary fervor is addictive and self-feeding, and the progressives fed off it enough to truly feel that the times, they were a-changin’. West Virginians were there to tell them, no, they are a-not.

There is a complex political significance to this. BBB may yet come back in some form, but it is exceedingly unlikely that it will do so in anything close to its current version. Manchin would need to do some impressive backtracking to reverse course now, and it would be difficult for him to explain to his constituents, who oppose the bill 3 to 1.

Manchin may have done more than just rescue the country from penury; he may have politically rescued the party which now holds him in so much contempt. The excesses of the BBB – which, keep in mind, is the watered-down version of an even more hideously expensive and socially disruptive piece of legislation – is a lingering albatross around the neck of Democrats who are nervously facing an election year that presents a solid generic Republican advantage. Manchin just gave congressional Democrats and Biden an opportunity to reset, reassess strategy, govern more from the center and possibly minimize damage next November.

Will they take advantage of this opening? Given the entrenchment that characterizes politics these days, it’s unlikely. In any case, Democrats, like the rest of the country, owe Joe Manchin a debt of gratitude for slapping the detonator out of their hand; a metaphorical debt nearly as great as the very real fiscal one which Joe Manchin just averted.

Kelly Sloan is a political and public affairs consultant and a recovering journalist based in Denver.