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Welcome to the commentary magazine Daily Podcast. Today's Thursday, August 12, 2021.

I am John Podhoritz, the editor of commentary magazine. You can find us at our new URL at www.commentary.org

with me as always executive editor, a Greenwald Hi-Aped senior writer, Christine Rosen-Hykristine,

and associate editor Noah Rothman-Hynoah. So not only did Andrew Kulmas resignation cast a shadow

over Joe Biden's towering accomplishment, the bipartisan infrastructure, heart infrastructure bill

passed the Senate by a margin of 69 to 30, but that wasn't the biggest political news of the day

because of Andrew Kulmas resignation. We are in the long dark night of the soul in relation to

the final passage of this infrastructure bill because the squad has come out. The democratic

progressives have come out to say that they will not consider voting for the bill unless there is

the giant three and a half trillion dollar reconciliation bill for them to vote on also and with a three

seat majority in the house for Democrats Nancy Pelosi finds herself in an incredible pickle,

which is that maybe she can say fine, you progressives go, do what you think you need to do as is

necessary and we will now rely on the goodwill and the good faith of Republicans who want to be

on the right side of the infrastructure bill in the house and will vote for it and therefore

allow you to cast a vote against it but will still have Joe Biden's triumph with the infrastructure bill.

Or Kevin McCarthy can decide the house minority leader can decide to attempt to put a stake through

the heart of the Biden presidency by convincing his members to vote on mass against the bill,

which means that every Democrat but two needs to vote for it for it to become law.

What an interesting political dynamic this is really really interesting. The infrastructure bill

is so popular that it got 19 Republican votes in the Senate out of 50 doesn't sound like a lot

but it's still the first time in almost 20 years that we've had such a bipartisan vote.

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