Speaker Pelosi has called the House back into session Saturday to vote on the Maloney bill that would roll back perverse changes made by Postmaster General Louis DeJoy aimed at sabotaging vote-by-mail and the Postal Service generally. So far, so good.

Then Pelosi added $25 billion in emergency funds for the Postal Service. That may be a misstep, in two respects.

As my reporting showed, the post office does not need that money until next year. According to its SEC filings, the USPS is sitting on $13 billion in cash, backed by another $10 billion from the original CARES Act, as yet unspent. The problem is DeJoy’s deliberate sabotage, not a scarcity of funds.

The first risk is that the Saturday debate bogs down into an argument over how much money the USPS needs, rather than the need to reverse all of the perverse management decisions.

The second risk is that the debate over the Postal Service crowds out the even more consequential need to restore and expand public support for continued federal supplemental unemployment aid, which has now expired, as well as emergency aid to state and local governments, and the other urgent elements in the $3.5 trillion HEROES Act, which has been blocked by Trump and Senate Republicans.

Pelosi and Chuck Schumer have already signaled that they would settle for $2 trillion, giving away much of their bargaining position even before negotiations resume. It’s just not possible that Congress can act on both the postal bill and on the larger HEROES relief act in one day. Negotiations with the White House and Mitch McConnell have been suspended since August 7.

So unless Pelosi intends to keep the House in session longer, the risk is that Republicans will make some kind of compromise on the Postal Service, providing money but not all of the management safeguards, and Congress will go home without acting on the HEROES Act.

Once again, Trump is crazy like a fox. He emulates another great dictator, Chairman Mao, who famously said, "Two steps forward, one step backward."

By creating an entirely artificial crisis at the Postal Service, and then partly walking it back, Trump diverts attention from all the other urgently needed parts of coronavirus relief, and sets up giving the Democrats half a victory that at best merely restores the status quo, leaves over 30 million workers without relief—and leaves both parties looking like they should share the blame.

Democrats, coming off a triumphant virtual convention, have to do better than this.