Many people believed that Joe Biden would never be able to get 10 Republicans to agree to a bipartisan mini-bill deal without also agreeing to jettison most of the rest of his fiscal/infrastructure/climate agenda. They figured that these efforts would eventually fail. Once it had failed, Biden would then go to the bipartisanists and say, “Look, we tried. It didn’t work. Now we pour everything into the reconciliation bill.”
That wasn’t a bad plan. It was just another way to get to passing the agenda. In any case, that’s what many people believed. I was one of them. I was wrong.
This is what I mean by Biden having his cake and eating it too.
Now, to be fair, I didn’t think it was impossible, just unlikely. But they both get you to the same end goal.