The moderates did not know it, but Democratic leaders had been doing their own postelection recalibration after insisting for months that any deal less than $2 trillion was inadequate. Three days after the dinner at Ms. Murkowski’s house, Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Senator Chuck Schumer, Democrat of New York and the minority leader, had driven to Wilmington to meet with Mr. Biden and plan the year ahead. She compared their negotiations to how Billy Crystal’s character, Miracle Max, describes a patient in the film who has been tortured to the brink of death, pronouncing them “mostly dead.” 