Thread by @AJentleson

McConnell is upbeat because he is getting what he wants: the least amount of aid injected into the economy while still passing a bill before the GA runoffs. Dems are upbeat because they love doing "deals," even when that deal is giving McConnell everything he wants.

https://twitter.com/heatherscope/status/1339049002814345218

The package Dems are gearing up to accept closely resembles the skinny framework McConnell released months ago. Dems came down by several trillion dollars while McConnell inched up. Unclear what the bipartisan negotiations achieved since this is basically just McConnell’a bill.

What more could Dems do? Dems did basically none of the things you'd normally want to do to pressure the other side. Instead of anything resembling a pressure campaign on popular policies like the checks,they spent months signaling their willingness to climb down off key demands.

Is it better than nothing? Members will decide for themselves. But the flipside is that the lack of aid like the checks and state/local will also cause human suffering. Bad deals happen when you give away the store then say it's better than nothing. Try not giving away the store.

With the Trump White House on record supporting a larger aid package including direct payment checks, and folks like Hawley vocally supporting the checks, you simply cannot argue that a better deal was not possible. Failure to leverage those points was just that - a failure.

They want a deal that passes muster with Morning Joe as better than nothing. They will tell their members, do you want to evict people on the holidays? (No.) And they will hope no one asks tough questions about why they failed to get a better deal.

https://twitter.com/jordanzakarin/status/1339065430686781441?s=20

As I said, members will decide whether it's better than nothing. But rather than spend months hammering Rs on popular policies like the checks, the Dem pressure strategy here appeared to be to publicly tell Republicans that they were eager to deliver less.

https://twitter.com/AJentleson/status/1338321785696161793?s=20

If you can’t leverage this into a better deal, man, that’s on you. It’s simply not credible to say that what’s coming down the pike was the best deal possible. People will suffer as a result.