My guess is my corner of twitter agrees with the substance of my latest @WSJopinion arguing for more stimulus/relief. So let me flesh out the underlying political argument--everyone will need to compromise to get this done and better this year than next. wsj.com/articles/the-e…
My comments are filled up with blame for President Trump and Leader McConnell. A lot of that is justified. But blaming them, however justifiably, does not help anyone if nothing ever passes. Instead need to figure out how to pass something. Which is going to require compromises.
Maybe the Democrats win both Georgia Senate seats in which case they could come back and try for more. But when you're worried about a problem should place a lot of emphasis on making it as unbad as possible in the bad case not as good as possible in the good case. So better now.
And if Democrats do not get both seats this will only get harder because Senator McConnell will be less motivated by the Georgia race, more reluctant to give President Biden a win, and they can more plausibly argue just wait for the vaccine to solve the problem.
Get something done now. If blaming Trump & McConnell helps get a bigger and better deal that's great. But if becomes a satisfying excuse for not figuring out what needs to be done to make a deal work for them then the blame won't do anything to help the millions of unemployed.
Some friends think the strategy should not be to show any weakness lest we get a worse deal. I respect this view. But I try not to be overly strategic and right now *one* of my worries is that Democrats try to overplay their hands and end up with nothing.
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