Joe Biden’s gazillion-dollar federal spendathon is coming up short, not because the opposition won’t take his statesmanlike appeal to “get out of the way” but because the Senate is split 50-50 and Democrats have a microscopic majority in the House. You know what that means. Whenever the Democratic left today can’t build a mandate at the polls, it has an automatic default: Form a mob.

No one was surprised when a tiny mob followed Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema into a public bathroom Sunday and recorded a video of her entering...

Sen. Joe Manchin (D., W.Va.) speaks to reporters in Washington, Oct. 6.

Photo: Stefani Reynolds/Bloomberg News

Joe Biden’s gazillion-dollar federal spendathon is coming up short, not because the opposition won’t take his statesmanlike appeal to “get out of the way” but because the Senate is split 50-50 and Democrats have a microscopic majority in the House. You know what that means. Whenever the Democratic left today can’t build a mandate at the polls, it has an automatic default: Form a mob.

No one was surprised when a tiny mob followed Arizona Sen. Kyrsten Sinema into a public bathroom Sunday and recorded a video of her entering and leaving the stall, to hold the senator “accountable”—a word the left has drained of meaning.

When asked, Mr. Biden described this repellent tactic as “part of the process,” affirming that voters who thought Mr. Biden would be a post-Trump respite from spite got stiffed. In August 2020, a D.C. mob surrounded a woman dining outdoors and screamed, “White silence is violence!” because she refused their demand to raise her fist. She said later she agreed with some of their views, but didn’t like being bullied. Meet Kyrsten Sinema, who has one big vote.

There is an alternative explanation for why the president’s agenda is blocked by Sen. Joe Manchin and Sen. Sinema, and it’s yet another American political principle Mr. Biden has lost track of: federalism.

A simple definition of federalism still sits inside the language of the 10th Amendment: “The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.” A shorter version of the 10th Amendment would be: The states matter.

Democrats going back to Woodrow Wilson have wanted the 10th Amendment’s state prerogatives to get out of their way. In our time, the Democratic opposition to federalism could be summarized as “civil rights versus states’ rights.” Notwithstanding bipartisan passage of landmark civil rights laws some 55 years ago, the left’s new argument is that because the U.S. is “systemically” racist, Congress must pass a national law like H.R.1, pre-empting states’ authority over their own elections. The purpose of the do-or-die, no-limits Biden “agenda” is to bury what’s left of the principle of distributed authority with the states once and for all.

Thus, the left derides Mr. Manchin as merely a “fossil-fuels” senator. They chase Ms. Sinema into bathrooms because they find her disagreements with their undifferentiated claims for the “national interest” unfathomable. Sens. Manchin and Sinema seem to understand that if these bills pass as proposed, America’s 50 distinct states will have been reduced by the “national” Democratic Party to nullities. Like New York and California, the remaining states will become shadow versions of the federal government.

Mr. Manchin argues that two of the largest entitlements, Social Security and Medicare, are already running out of money. But the Biden bill’s new entitlements would create federal authority—through its initial funding—over child care, elder care, prekindergarten and community colleges. In time, federal programs would wind back state roles in these formerly local functions.

The Biden legislation also extends federal funding (ergo, control) deep into local schools’ training of principals, residencies for teachers in training, and “grow your own programs,” a grab bag of general funding needs.

To satisfy the Manchin-Sinema cost concerns, the Progressive Caucus’s Rep. Pramila Jayapal now says the left might reduce the legislative window for these initiatives to five years from 10. But when the entitlements are inevitably renewed in five years, all states—including West Virginia and Arizona—will have to use their own revenue to support these non-“paid for” federal mandates, as happened with the underfunded Individuals with Disabilities Education Act passed in 1975.

Are moderate, head-in-the-sand Democratic senators such as Maggie Hassan of New Hampshire, Mark Kelly of Arizona or Catherine Cortez Masto of Nevada going to sign off on turning their states into Bernie Sanders’s Vermont?

Look in any direction and one sees a Biden policy trying to subvert state or even private independence.

Mr. Biden’s early cascade of executive orders reversed Donald Trump’s efforts to pare back the federal role. The Biden vaccine mandate stretches to all private companies with more than 100 employees, a precedent. The southern border is a federal responsibility, but Mr. Biden is refusing a meeting request from 26 Republican governors who are reduced to processing the effects of federal nonmanagement.

Attorney General Merrick Garland this week said he will deploy the FBI and federal prosecutors to monitor disputes between local school boards and parents over pedagogy.

Even Mr. Biden’s “pay their fair share” federal tax increases on income, capital gains and corporations will shaft states, making it more difficult to shape their own revenue, trade and development policies. Bye-bye, Colorado and Connecticut, Uncle Sam needs it all now.

The political, media and mob battering of Sens. Manchin and Sinema will escalate and, yes, they could cave. But Joe Manchin was born in Farmington, W.Va., and Kyrsten Sinema in Tucson, Ariz. Their states shaped who they are. Many of their colleagues, including the president, have roots in just one place now—Washington.

Write henninger@wsj.com.

Wonder Land: "We've got three things to do" says Joe Biden. "The debt ceiling, continuing resolution and the two pieces of legislation. We do that, the country's gonna be in great shape." Images: Disney via Everett Collection/Getty Images Composite: Mark Kelly The Wall Street Journal Interactive Edition