Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet practically came unglued Thursday as he watched former Vice President Joe Biden tout his bipartisan dealmaking skills by showcasing what was arguably among the worst of Obama-era deals. Reflecting on a deal he cut in late 2012 with then-Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, Biden offered, “I got Mitch McConnell to raise taxes $600 billion by raising the top rate.”

Bennet, bursting at the seams, was allowed a 30-second response and his recollections of Biden’s supposedly cagey negotiations were quite different. “The deal that he talked about with Mitch McConnell was a complete victory for the Tea Party,” Bennet charged, noting that it extended the Bush tax cuts permanently. “The Democratic Party had been running against that for 10 years. We’ve lost that economic argument because that deal extended almost all those Bush tax cuts permanently and put in place the mindless cuts that we still are dealing with today that are called the sequester. That was a great deal for Mitch McConnell. […] It was a terrible deal for America.”

Bennet’s reflection is much more grounded in the reality of what happened. The Obama White House first capitulated on extending the Bush tax cuts in late 2010, cutting a deal to extend them by another two years. I personally recall Obama’s ’08 deputy campaign manager, Steve Hildebrand, decrying the deal on cable television, saying it was a complete betrayal of the values Obama had run on.

“I think the president made a huge mistake in supporting any extension of tax cuts,” Hildebrand told Huffington Post at the time. “We can’t afford it as a country, and we should recognize that. … And the whole idea of negotiating with Republicans who won’t negotiate in good faith, it is not the direction the president should be taking.”

But that capitulation set up Biden’s ultimate giveaway to the GOP toward the end of 2012. I’m going to skip over some of the details of those negotiations. But the thing to know is that then-Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid felt like he was in a good position vis-a-vis McConnell. Reid had resolved to let all the tax cuts expire on everyone (the so-called “fiscal cliff”) and then negotiate with Republicans to restore some of those tax cuts to working-class and middle-class Americans while letting tax rates rise for the richest Americans. The Intercept’s Ryan Grim has more details here. But the bottom line is, McConnell went behind Reid’s back to negotiate directly with Biden because he knew he could get a better deal. And he did.