Welcome to the commentary magazine podcast for Thursday, August 6, 2020.

I am John Pothor, the editor of commentary magazine, the 70-odd year-old monthly of intellectual analysis, political,

property and cultural criticism from a conservative perspective. We invite you to join us at commentary magazine.com,

where we give you a few free reads and ask you to subscribe with me as always, executive editor,

a Greenwall high-aid.

Hi, John. Associate editor, Noah Rothman, high-nowa.

Hi, John.

And senior writer, Christine Rosen, high-Christine.

Hi, John.

So weeks and weeks and weeks of discussions of the need for another stimulus rescue package for the economy and the unemployed and everybody in the wake of the coronavirus.

All of the indications are that the negotiations keep getting hamstrung by, and I don't think here it's partisan to say this,

that Nancy Pelosi in particular and the Democrats keep moving the goalpost further and further back as they seem to think they have a deal, which by the way is amusing because she is negotiating mostly with Stephen Manuchin, the Treasury Secretary, who is negotiating strategy despite the fact that he's supposedly a really businessman and Trump is a negotiator all this,

is to say, what do you want, what do you need?

You know, well, I'll do whatever you want, and then her response is to say, okay, on Tuesday, the government should pay for everybody's masks.

And then on Wednesday, something else, and just keep accruing and adding things, it seems pretty clear that she would like or the Democrats would like this deal to blow up so that they can blame the Republicans for it blowing up.

And yet I don't really understand when presumes that given that they are Democrats and believe in large-scale government intervention in the economy and action to save the economy and all of that, what it is that they think is how they're going to make the case that Republicans were unreasonable when they seem to, when the Republican negotiators, they've cut Mitch McConnell out apparently,

and you're just basically saying whatever we can do to just get this over with.

But am I missing a beat here? I don't know, Christine?

No, I mean, she's even the kind of, you know, Pelosi-friendly media is saying she's taking a hard line.

Political culture emboldened, and they sort of, you know, wrap it in this idea of her glorious, you know, intelligence about how she wields power, which is getting old and tiresome.

Because actually, in this case, I think it's a risky strategy for two reasons. One is that Republicans very quickly are coming out with concessions, they're giving them more money, they just, you know, they want to extend, they said they would extend the moratorium on rent, they would add, you know, they went up in the number for the unemployment.

I mean, they're squabbling still about stuff like unemployment, insurance and whatnot, but they have given concession after concession after concession, and they, and all from Pelosi side, the only minor concession they gave was something of a relief.

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