“Build Back Better” is dead. Long live the “Inflation Reduction Act”!

In the canny way politicians have perfected, Senate Democrats took the pulse of public concerns and moved toward the top priority: Inflation is, after all, on everyone’s mind.

And we may have gotten “BBB-lite” already in the $1.2 trillion bipartisan infrastructure bill to rescue the nation’s decaying, outmoded transportation system over the next 10 years. That bill’s one flaw was that it raised no revenue, but that was the reason it got Republican votes.

The “IRA,” as we can call it, is different. It not only makes the climate crisis investments shorn from earlier bills, but it “taxes the rich” and lowers the deficit for the first time since Bill Clinton’s first budget in 1993 — and Clinton raised taxes across the board, unlike the IRA.

Yes, Kyrsten Sinema managed to preserve — for now — the notorious “carried interest loophole” that provides additional tax breaks for the highest-paid Wall Street types. And the Senate parliamentarian vetoed the possibility of drug price negotiations with private insurers, though — crucially — retaining it for Medicare.

But the changes the bill makes — and the directions it sets — are impressive.

It’s also remarkable that the bill passed on another steamy August weekend; most prolonged summer sessions lead to nothing. This time, Democrats showed that they can govern with 50 members, plus a vice president, something they’d never done before.

Joe Biden — and senators Chuck Schumer and Joe Manchin, belatedly — understood that sweeping changes in a single bill can often lead to failure, or backlash. What the IRA does, like the firearms legislation earlier, is change the course of Washington, something that can lead to bigger bills later on.

Whether it does or not depends on what voters decide in November and — contrary to what you keep hearing in the political chatter — no one has voted, and people are clearly still making up their minds.

For the better part of the year, we’ve been told a Republican takeover of the House and Senate was inevitable. Now, there are finally some second thoughts.

At the moment, Republicans are leading none of the Senate races they’d need to achieve a majority. Democrats are leading in Ohio and Pennsylvania, are even in Wisconsin, and one point behind in North Carolina — all Republican-held seats.

If Democrats picked up even two seats, they’d no longer find it necessary to cater to the whims of one or two caucus members.

Who knows? The filibuster might even be put in the ashbin of history, where it belongs, since the new Democrats would have been elected with precisely that expectation.

Then there’s the House, for which the best advice is “relax.” No one knows what will happen there, for a simple reason.

There are only 34 Senate races, against 435 in the House — 13 times as many. It’s just not possible, in August, to make any accurate prediction.

Whether it’s the president’s approval rating or the “sure thing” prognostications about Congress, it’s the same inconsequential puffing that passes for journalism — dominated by money, polling and ad coverage, with little about what’s actually going on.

For we forget a major truth about polling: that it represents a snapshot in time, and doesn’t necessarily have any predictive value. The news cycle feeds the polls, and spins back into the coverage.

When what’s happening changes, so does the rest of it. But don’t treat any of the foregoing as a prediction; I went out of that business long ago.

The real question for voters in November is whether inflation and (now declining) gas prices are their chief concern, or if the “Big Lie,” the attempt to overturn the 2020 election, and —finally — action on global warming, drug prices, and federal taxes — are more important.

The wild card could be abortion. Until the Dobbs decision was handed down, it was virtually impossible for a Republican politician to lose votes by opposing abortion. As long as Roe stood, and really, Casey, which replaced it, there was no chance any state was going to ban abortion, or anything close.

Now, the calculation has reversed. Pledging to ban abortion could become a liability. We saw that in Kansas, and it will figure in more referendums, and more races, in November.

So my advice, at least until October, when the outlines become clearer, is to stop fixating on what might happen on Nov. 8. Pay attention to issues you care about, and what the candidates are saying about them.

Frankly, watching our great experiment in democracy is more fun than predictions, and a lot more interesting. Let’s try it.

Douglas Rooks, a Maine editor, commentator and reporter since 1984, is the author of three books. His first, “Statesman: George Mitchell and the Art of the Possible,” is now out in paperback.  He welcomes comment at drooks@tds.net