There was a pretty shocking floor vote in the House yesterday. Two Democrats, Jared Golden and Marie Glusenkamp Perez, voted for the rule to allow a vote on some Republican nonsense. The reason this is important is because the rule is the partisan vote — it gets the bill to the floor:
Casten is the Democrat representing IL-6.
Here’s some pure, 100% unadulterated Hakeem Jeffries:
State of play: The result left Democrats astonished, with House Minority Leader Hakeem Jeffries (D-N.Y.) telling reporters he "didn't get a heads up" from Golden or Gluesenkamp Perez.
"You'll have to talk to Katherine," he added, referring to House Minority Whip Katherine Clark (D-Mass.), whose primary job is to get Democrats in line on votes.
Yeah, ask Katherine. She’ll know. Oops:
A spokesperson for Clark, asked if the whip got a heads-up from the two rogue Democrats, told Axios: "No she didn't."
I love this part, considering that Pelosi hand-picked Jeffries:
What they're saying: Former House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.), who was known for her iron-fisted leadership while in power, expressed surprise that a rule was allowed to fail.
"Voting for the rule is something that I, as Speaker, we never — we didn't even consider that anybody would do that," she told reporters.
"We never had that problem. So I'm disappointed that they did that," Pelosi said, referring to Golden and Gluesenkamp Perez.
Pelosi is “disappointed”. A mordant chuckle is in order here at her choice of words. I think she means “disgusted and pissed”. She knows, and apparently Jeffries doesn’t, that someone in his position could make a member’s life pretty unpleasant. The Speaker or Minority Leader is like a little King or Queen. They control office assignments, they have huge influence on committee assignments, and there’s plenty of other things they can do. The House isn’t the Senate. MGP can have the office the absolute furthest away from the floor, so every vote is a long walk. She could be denied a lot of little privileges, and she could be assigned to the “Kiss my Fucking Ass” committees — none that are relevant to anything her constituents want — by Jeffries. But she’s betting that she won’t. I’d take her side of that bet. (Forget about Golden, he’s a lame duck lost cause.)
Why should we care about this? Well, first, you’re reading a blog called “Reverse Pyromania” not “Happy Good Time Stories Telling Everyone How Everything Will Somehow Turn Out Better”. I don’t look at the bright side because that side hasn’t been much in evidence in Trump 2.0.
Second, nobody is afraid of the Democrats being in power in 2027, and probably in 2029. This vote is an example why. The Republicans are counting on a lot of things. Let me name some of them:
(1) There will be other drama queens making it hard for Democrats to get anything done in the House. Jared Moskowitz, Josh Gottheimer, MGP and others apparently think they’re Senators now and they’ll be party of the revolving cast of assholes thowing sand in the gears. I’m not even going to get into Fetterman
(2) Nobody is more likely to talk about something incessantly then boot it to a committee than Democrats. Atrios flagged this one yesterday:
Five working groups on the thing that he’s talked about for months instead of everything else he could be talking about. That is some weak-ass shit, my friends in Christ Jesus.
The bottom line is that they can’t do any of those things that he enumerated. Trump will veto them all. (They might be able to leverage some of them via shutdowns over the budget, but I have 0.00000000% confidence that they will.)
What he can do, and what needs to be done, is to do what Republicans would do, which is to convene a bunch of investigative committees and control the headlines by bringing in a bunch of corrupt Trumpers. But no, we’re going to promise shit we can’t do, and then have “working groups”.
(3) Democrats might not even get elected because Trump’s little minions are making sure the fix is in. Joe wrote about the USPS nonsense yesterday, but I present to you, my brothers and sisters, Jeffries’ hand-picked point man on election interference, my former Representative, Joe Morelle of the Rochester Democratic machine:
Joe is the guy who’s supposed to be handling this. Yet all he can do is point and say “bad”.
I’m not expecting a magic wand, but I would like a little bit of what he wants to do about it. “We will be deploying an army of lawyers to counter this obviously illegal action, and we will be sure that when Democrats are in power, any USPS employee who delays the delivery of ballots will be prosecuted to the full extent of the law, including federal prison sentences.” (I’m guessing there are laws on the books that address interfering with the mail, but I’m not a lawyer, plus who cares, this is important. Act like it.)
(4) Democrats have a history of getting into office and acting like they just got a new pair of shoes that need to be carefully broken in. Oliver Willis addressed this yesterday:
Biden did some good things, but he didn’t deal with the terrible USPS situation left by Trump and he didn’t appoint an Attorney General who would put the gas to the floor on the 1/6 protesters. He didn’t do what Trump 2.0 did the minute they got into office. I’m not saying that Democrats should do things that are blatantly illegal, but they should act quickly, make court reform their first priority, and ask for forgiveness rather than waiting for permission.
Fear is an important weapon when institutions are failing, but there’s a chance that they will be resurrected if elections go the right way and if fighters get into office. That fear is not evident in Trump’s toadies, nor is it evident in the Supreme Court. The reason why is elaborated above. We’re in for a long haul before this country gets better, if it ever does.
