Kevin McCarthy is down to 200 votes. Victory is slipping away.
I wonder why they hold multiple votes each day? There's no time for negotiation between the votes, so what are the odds anyone is going to switch? The first vote of the day tells you where everyone still stands, right?
The 20 odd Republicans enjoy the humiliation. It's by design
They don't feel humiliation, they have massive boners. It's all about them, and no one put them jail for it.
'no one can put them in jail for it'
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Who's not voting?
Probably too busy talking to TV....
Rep. Ken Buck (R-CO). He's on his way to a medical appointment, and he's expected to be out tomorrow. In the meantime, the majority threshold is 217.
A Covid or RSV outbreak in the GOP caucus could make Jeffries speaker. Kind of West Wing-ish, but you never know.
and tenth vote won't go McCarthy's way either...
anyway, I came here for the jobs report....Wall Street is in a tizzy....
Why the tizzy
They knew back in the day of GHW Bush that this was gonna happen when the boomers left the work force
COVID accelerated the whole thing
We have many more consumers of goods and services than we have producers of goods and services as opposed to the past. Once the boomers die off we will have restored equilibrium to the jobs market and corporations will have to get used to selling less. The labor force has changed with far fewer workers who are working past 65 to 70 years old. We also have many younger men who are not participating in the work force for various reasons. - they are in school, they are stay at home -rs etc.
If Drum's figures are correct that we need ONLY 90K new jobs per month to keep up with the population now entering the workforce then we can "see" the problem. The codicil here is that not only has population growth slowed to almost nothing - there are many people who are leaving the work force for whatever reason(s)
But a person entering the work force is probably aged 18 to 24 and over the last 3 decades our birthrate has slowed even more!
This problem will get slightly worse before it starts to improve IMHO
Jeffries 9 McCarthy 0
If anything changes, it will be the result not of negotiation but of panic. And panic may occur at any time for any, or no, reason.
yeah, i was just trying to figure out the reason for all these votes when he must know he's not going to win. why do it just to lose repeatedly on live tv?
If I understand the situation correctly, the House must either vote or vote to adjourn. The Democrats and the 20 Republican insurgents are apparently the ones forcing the multiple votes to humiliate McCarthy by occasionally refusing to adjourn.
This is apparently why the 4th vote was held—there wasn't a motion to adjourn pending and the staff apparently started to call a vote rather quickly.
Ah. Well then, kudos to the dems on that. keep GOP incompetence on display for the country to see.
As far as I know, until there is a Speaker, Congress can't do anything else but vote for Speaker or adjourn. I suppose they could take turns flying around on Boebert's broom stick or playing with MTG's Jewish Space Laser. Maybe Santos can come up a with a whole new biography to entertain those folks.
They can also vote on rules of procedure. Normally, the House elects a Speaker and then passes the House rules, but on a very few occasions it has passed a rule saying that in a vote for Speaker the person with the most votes becomes Speaker, even if that person has less than a majority of the votes. It takes a majority vote to change the rules, so even if McCarthy decided he wanted a rules change, it's not clear he could get it.
Source? Nobody who asserts "even if that person has less than a majority of votes" can become Speaker ever provides a source for this claim. As far as I can find on Google, someone can win a majority of the votes that aren't cast as "present" and be named Speaker... but there appears to be exactly zero instances in which a plurality won the Speaker role.
At this point McCarthy should pull ALL OFFERS made to the freedom caucus. Say they're null and void. Then approach the Dems and make ONLY one promise - to raise the debt ceiling if they can get enough votes to get him elected speaker
The committee chairs and assignments should not be played with at the moment - we need to give the GOP a sturdier rope to hang themselves with and watching them NON Legislate would be perfect
Hear hear!
Why bargain for a debt ceiling increase when the House has no choice on the matter?
I don't see the Democrats accepting a deal that depends on McCarthy's faithful performance of some future act.
Good point. If some Republicans approach the Dems to form a coalition government, how could you trust them? Maybe if they put in a third party as Speaker? Kind of a Mitt Romney guy. Not well liked but maybe trustworthy.
Actually, this goes for the Republicans negotiating amongst themselves. Just because McCarthy promises them something how do they know he’ll deliver? What a bag of rats.
McCarthy believes he deserves the gavel. He is also power hungry and would like to put the Freedom caucus in its place. He doesn't have the political skill of a Pelosi per se but he probably knows he gave away too much already.
the debt ceiling fight is an easy one as D Ohrk said they have no choice but it would end THAT portion of the theatrics the freedom caucus depends on.
"Then approach the Dems and make ONLY one promise - to raise the debt ceiling if they can get enough votes to get him elected speaker"
How exactly would Dems enforce this ~9 months from now? Like what stops McCarthy from promising to raise the debt ceiling, getting Dems to vote for him, and then reneging on the promise later on? Or being replaced by another Speaker upon McCarthy's resignation/death/expulsion from the role, and the new Speaker says "Fck you, I never agreed to any such promise"?
Dems should remember always that the GOP is full of people who do things like pass legislation they said they wouldn't while Dems are busy attending a funeral. (Happened in NC.) Never trust a Republican.
Unless the Democrats chair Judiciary, Financial Services and some other key committees, we'll be treated to endless spurious impeachment motions and investigations. But the Republicans would never agree to let Democrats chair those committees. There won't be a deal with the D's.
I've wondered that too. My guess is that His Kevin thinks is demonstrates his fortitude and determination, that he won't let a little thing like being pantsed repeatedly on national television by his own team stop him from His Date with Destiny. (No, not the stripper. Like, fate and stuff.)
Finally, a chart I can understand!!
That chart must be a sign of Kevin's good humor about all this, as well as his looking forward to the new medical treatment.
Y'know there's this guy Hakeem Jeffries who got more votes than McCarthy every single time? Why isn't he the leading choice? jk
I think part of McCarthy's strategy is to just wear them down by forcing them to vote over and over. That indicates that he doesn't really understand his own party. The nut case wing of the GOP doesn't care about governing and it would not bother them at all to still be voting on the Speaker position 2 years from now. They care about building a brand as a destructive nihilist, and the more chances to froth at the mouth in front of cameras, the better for that purpose. The GOP has trapped itself in a gerrymander of its own making. The more districts they make where the primary is the only real election, the more they end up with congress people who are extreme reactionaries. That's how you win the Republican primary.
Took you long enough. But I like it.