We went back to making popcorn on the stove.
Phobias about ingesting household chemicals also keep me up at night.
I am convinced that we really, really should not be lighting all these candles and using all these air fresheners, and that we should all be opening windows as much as possible. It's just too goddamn hot to follow through most of the year, though.
But obviously a Republican House is going to be a tragedy.
They should really open all the windows. To help with the off-gassing.
So am I hallucinating or did Democrats really not eliminate the debt ceiling in their two years in power?
Surely it could have been tucked into reconciliation.
If we had done that, it would make it a lot easier to just sit back and laugh at the House majority's antics for the next two years.
I think they're going to figure something out because the " revolt" against McCarthy is all performative to ensure they have power over him; they have no one who wants to be speaker or could be elected if they did; but despite everyone's intention for this to be merely internal table-setting, it seems no longer 100% impossible that it could drag on long enough, with the super right wingers always finding a new reason to hold out, that it results in some kind of bipartisan power sharing agreement, which would be hilarious.
7- The usual gang of assholes (Manchin/Sinema) refused to include it so they didn't have 50 votes for it.
2. Where else would you expect to make it?
In the microwave using popcorn packaged into bags with toxic chemicals.
Growing up, we made popcorn in a hot air popper. I probably didn't make popcorn on the stove until I was in my 40s (and started reading about popcorn lung).
We had that.
We just microwave salted kernels and it works fine. Put a 1/3 cup of kernels and about a teaspoon of water in something with a lid that has space for them to pop.
I had forgotten, but we also had a special microwave popcorn cooker that was just a cone with a lid. It worked O.K., but really stopped being made after people decided that microwaves were no longer a trendy thing.
So am I hallucinating or did Democrats really not eliminate the debt ceiling in their two years in power?
Are they really this bad at this or was not eliminating the debt ceiling a desired outcome?
2: No air popper? The microwave thing for regular popcorn sounds nifty.
9 to 15. Really this bad, the marginal Democratic senators.
15: Further to 17. Isn't the right answer "yes", I.e. both?
You can kind of get where the pro-filibuster arguments are coming from, if you try really hard to be charitable, but the brain worms required to be pro-debt-ceiling are really something. It's a technocratic glitch that makes no sense on its face, that nobody honestly cares about, that exposes the national economy to massive risk, to no end whatsoever.
it seems no longer 100% impossible that it could drag on long enough, with the super right wingers always finding a new reason to hold out, that it results in some kind of bipartisan power sharing agreement, which would be hilarious.
This exact thing has been happening in the Alaska House of Representatives for years, and it would indeed be hilarious if it spread to the federal level. It does seem to be the trajectory they're on.
20: Yes, I heard about that. Though Alaskan idiosyncrasies might make it more feasible there.
In particular Dems would presumably demand something for their participation and I have a hard time imagining practically any of the Republican caucus being okay giving up anything at all.
Yeah, I think national Republicans are actually too rigidly partisan these days for enough of them to go for a power-sharing deal. Alaska is unusual in part for having a surprising number of more pragmatic types within the GOP in addition to the hard-core obstructionists.
Weirdly I think you get more pragmatic Republicans in states that are more Republican. In a closer state too many pragmatists just become Democrats and so there's no way for pragmatic Republicans to win primaries.
24: There's also just a little more pragmatics when day-to-day issues like schools and road maintenance (as opposed to construction) are in the balance.
A lot of the talk I was hearing on cable news suggested that Steve Scalise was more likely to end up speaker than Kevin McCarthy, but who knows how seriously to take that.
Remember that time Republicans were too stupid to let Obama cave on cutting Social Security? Just some real strategic brain geniuses on that side.
Give me a fake mustache, a voice coach, and two hours of Rep. Pelosi's time. I have an idea.
And the voice coach doesn't need to be a good one.
There's nothing in the rulebook that says the Speaker of the House can't be Vladimir Putin. Maybe. I don't actually know what the rules are.
24: In MA we had a few moderate Republican reps, but the last GOP candiate was Trumps and not endorsed by Baker. He endorsed I. The auditor's race only. One moderate Republican seems to have lost to a Democrat by a handful (like 7) votes.
You also get "conservative" business-friendly in a bad way Dems, because Republicans are a bad brand. Someone on this blog used to complain that in Rhode Island the people with cruel policies were all Democrats.
Hah: if McCarthy doesn't get voted in soon, he'll have to move out of the speaker's office (that he was already given by tradition).
You also get "conservative" business-friendly in a bad way Dems, because Republicans are a bad brand.
Yeah, the corollary of the dynamic UPETGI mentioned in red states is that in very blue states the Democrats often end up more conservative than you might expect because those same pragmatists end up casting their lot with the Dems. New York is a classic example and California seems to be trending that way too.
New York is a special case. Yes, lots of the Democrats are ideologically kind of conservative, but even more than that lots of them are non-ideologically corrupt. Which comes out conservative, or at least 'business friendly' because that's where the money is, but in a slightly differently shaped way.
I would go further and say that the centrist/moderate/pro-business/pro-police wing of the Democratic Party, more visible in states where Dems are a supermajority, may be wrong in a lot of ways, but it's no more antithetical to what Democrats historically or ideologically are than is the progressive wing.
The centrists tend to be status quo biased, not supporting new taxes but not supporting the teardown of the old ones or the welfare state either. And yes, I suppose some people see this as the "traditional" or classical Republican, but at this point, the Republican Party has been more reactionary than not for over 40 years versus more centrist than for at most 30 years before that (generously say 1950-1980-2020), so that image is pretty dated.
I use something like this for microwave popcorn; it's pretty great: https://smile.amazon.com/Original-Salbree-Microwave-Collapsible-Available/dp/B072LTWNQD/
34, 35: Yeah, fair enough. These sorts of patterns are complicated in a lot of cases by the fact that many states that are now Dem strongholds also have a history of corrupt machine politics that created its own incentives. The fact that many of the most prominent examples of corrupt urban machines were Democratic leads to assumptions in some circles that there's an inherent partisanship to them, but there were actually a lot of cities with corrupt Republican machines too.
Back to McCarthy, it looks like he will in fact not be elected speaker on the first ballot. What a clown show.
It's only been 100 years since that last happened.
In the nineteenth century these things could go to dozens of ballots. Recapturing that antebellum energy.
Impressive how exactly 100 years it's been! The last time was for the 1923-24 session, so presumably early 1923 - maybe not the start of January as it is now.
In 1923 (68th Congress), in a closely divided House, both major party nominees initially failed to gain a majority because of votes cast for other candidates by Members from the Progressive Party or from the "progressive" wing of the Republican Party. Many of these Members agreed to vote for the Republican candidate only on the ninth ballot, after the Republican leadership had agreed to accept a number of procedural reforms these Members favored.
McCarthy will also lose the second vote.
The Republican House caucus overall has a nihilist bent to it, but it also has a small number of super-committed nihilists. All they want is to burn shit down, and they don't particularly care what burns. Would they go so far as to refuse to allow a Republican speaker? I suppose not, but I am starting to wonder.
If I understand correctly, since it's a majority of "present and voting", they can hold out indefinitely as long as they want to? And I guess as long as Dems stay voting. One tweet oddly said some Dems are sitting out.
Can't be many Democrats sitting out. Hakeem Jeffries got more votes than McCarthy on the first ballot.
To be fair, he's a much better person for the job.
The only reason any Dems would leave would be to get more popcorn and come right back
I'm certainly enjoying the bloodletting.
God help us when this House actually has to do something, but for now the train wreck is entertaining as hell. Couldn't hardly happen to a nicer empty suit.
47/50: Robert Costa tweets: "Some Democrats might not show up for future rounds, I'm told, by several sources... some are just bored by the House GOP drama, others think it's better than voting present... Some are gaming out what a missed vote or present vote would mean for hte threshold and ending hte chaos, all while wanting to say on Jeffries's good side. No one wants to break ranks but many don't want to be here all day"
53 https://twitter.com/joshtpm/status/1610368545673584643?s=46&t=GbCEIWyrSr_zB4mN9ByQnw
There's just no reason for Ds to do anything to help McCarthy become Speaker. His whole deal to date has been cozying up to the crazies. Let the Rs keep voting until they either clean up their own mess or their saner members come to the table to negotiate something with actual value to the D caucus.
54: Hopefully someone on the floor is telling them that.
I only just saw that one of McCarthy's concessions was to allow the House to cut pay of individual federal works, or fire them. Vom.
McCarthy lost the third vote. This is incredible.
Gosar and Gaetz, both of whom play to their rubes by attacking her, asked AOC if some Democrats would sit out later rounds to allow McCarthy to win with the Republican votes he has (currently 202 so 403 present and voting which means 21 Democrats would have to leave). She said Hell no.
58- going in the wrong direction! Was 19 against him in rounds 1-2 and this time was 20.
59: As it begins to sink in that they have no plan for getting out of this.
Truly bizarre that they crazies are voting for Jim Jordan and Jim Jordan is voting for McCarthy.
Jim Jordan is savvy enough not to vote for a pedophile-enabler.
Jordan is a disgusting piece of shit, just as awful as the Gaetzes and Gosars of the world, but McCarthy already met his demands and he's best off staying bought for the time being.
59: It's fascinating that they went to her specifically rather than, say, someone in leadership. Like they assume the most ideologically extreme members are running the show on the Dem side too. (They are not.)
My prediction: The Republicans settle on a compromise candidate -- Donald Trump.
They might have hoped she'd be willing to screw over the Democratic leadership, and would have a crew that would follow her, in a way that someone more moderate wouldn't. I think that's a fundamental confusion about what leftists are likely to do as opposed to what MAGA types are likely to do, but it might have been the thinking.
67: Yeah, that's plausible. A surprising number of people who should really know better tend to equate the Squad types with MAGA types in terms of tactics, but they're really quite different. Leftists in the House tend to ally closely with Dem leadership and show a lot of pragmatism about what they can accomplish. To the extent that the Dems have obstructionist attention-seekers they're from the centrist part of the caucus. (But this is much less of a thing overall than among the GOP.)
I imagine they figure that McCarthy and AOC are basically the same -- both Commies -- and so AOC would naturally be looking for a way to help McCarthy. Plus, Gosar and Gaetz may have painted themselves into a corner here and are getting desperate to find a way out that doesn't involve backing down.
Maybe they come back tomorrow, try three more ballots, and then adjourn until January 2, 2025.
I wonder if they have an alternative candidate in mind. Maybe the idea is to block McCarthy forever and propose someone else who they think would be palatable to the Republican caucus as a whole. It almost wouldn't matter who -- the power of having been able to derail the speakership would be enough to give the nutcase caucus a whole lot of sway going forward. But I don't know if that's realistic at all and don't have a name in mind.
Gosar and Gaetz may have painted themselves into a corner here and are getting desperate to find a way out that doesn't involve backing down.
This definitely seems to be part of what's going on. It's clear that they didn't actually have a plan.
Also pretty clear that they don't have an alternative candidate. Just pure obstructionism all the way down.
TPM asserts that Gosar was afraid that the Dems would act to screw over the Republican dissenters.
Probably Jordan or Scalise is their desired outcome, but almost nobody who isn't them is going to be willing to give them a win by supporting a candidate they like better than McCarthy.
The longest Speaker election ever (in 1855) went 133 ballots and only ended when they voted to change the rules to allow a plurality winner. This could go on for a while.
You never like to hear "the last time this happened was 1855" though...
There is a disconcerting level of 1850s-style energy on the right these days. This disaster is right on brand.
Isn't the true reactionary play here to announce that the Speaker is not actually an important position, given that a woman has held the position? Then they move to change the rules to create a not-Speaker who does strangely Speaker-esque things, but with some good old-fashioned Mansfieldian manliness.
The problem is that any change to the rules also requires a majority vote.
78: Preston Brooks for Speaker. He surely knows how to wield a gavel.
I just read an article about the 1855 speaker election, and it just didn't say anything about the issue raised in 80. Why were they able to get a majority to vote for the plurality rule but not to vote for the person that this rule inevitably meant would get elected? Very strange.
Ha, they adjourned until tomorrow. Incredible.
82: IIRC it was sort of an orchestrated deal to finally break the deadlock. I remember McPherson talks about it but not all the details.
Jeffries got 212 on the second ballot, so word has gotten around to keep voting.
My prediction: The Republicans settle on a compromise candidate -- Donald Trump.
Joe Lieberman's probably looking for something to do.
I hope the Democratic leadership has a set of conditions in their back pockets on which they'd support an acceptable R (not McCarthy). I think the likelihood is still low, but it's not zero.
The weird thing in 1855 was that the Whigs had collapsed but the Republicans had not yet really organized, so it was one of the very rare brief periods in American history when there wasn't a two-party system. The Democrats got clobbered in the 1854 midterms over the Kansas-Nebraska Act, but no other party got a majority in the House and the largest bloc was a vague grouping just called the "Opposition Party," with the balance of seats held by the Know-Nothings. Nathaniel Banks, the eventual Speaker, was a Know-Nothing, which may have made him too toxic for some of the former Whigs to vote for directly even if they were willing to vote to change to a plurality win.
I didn't realize until looking into this just now that he was the same Nathaniel Banks who was later military governor of Louisiana during and after the Civil War. Complicated guy.
It can't be that hard to govern Louisiana. Mostly huge assholes have held the job.
So, if the House held a voice vote to adjourn, who was holding the gavel. Also, who is third in line for the presidency now? Senator Murray?
Yes, Murray is currently third in line.
I think the Clerk is acting Speaker if there's no elected one.
I was surprised by the voice vote, but I can imagine the Dems not being in the mood to stay overnight.
Ah, now I understand. I thought Aiken won in 1855, but now that you say Banks won I see that I was confused about where the article ended due to an ad.
So what actually happened was that many people voted for the change of procedure thinking Aiken would win, and then it didn't pan out that way and Banks won in a squeaker.
https://www.washingtonpost.com/history/2022/12/30/house-speaker-longest-vote/
I thought they were holding out for Trump, but maybe they are actually holding out for JFK Jr.
The pro tem seat did not go to the longest-serving senator, Dianne Feinstein, as is tradition. Can't imagine why; forever a mystery, one supposes.
I was wondering about that. Curious indeed.
Except for the senility, she's fine.
There's nothing in the Constitution that says the Speaker can't be Jeremy Renner's detached femur.
My understanding is that Feinstein's office has been engaged in the process of organizing records in preparation for retirement but I'll believe she's retiring only when I see the announcement.
Obviously, archives are the highest priority for California residents right now.
To be clear, his femur is apparently still attached. But after a couple of more days of indecision, maybe he'll agree to take one for the team.
103: You joke, but wrapping up a decades-long career is a big deal and apparently the time you get post-resignation to clean out the office(s) is too short to do it properly, so the process has to start much earlier. But who knows when she'll actually leave. At this point I could imagine she finishes the term.
Somewhat annoying to me that the press keeps labeling the 20 as "election deniers." That's a much, much more populous group among the R caucus; and if you define it as having voted to not certify on Jan fucking 6th includes the Kevinator. Iguess something like "most strident election deniers" would be accurate, but there's some real reputation-washing going on for the others.
It's hard to figure out what to post that's going to be more enjoyable than today's voting shitshow.
The NYT gives us the lowdown on McCarthy's opponents, and it turns out that (by the NYT's definition) only 12 of the 20 are election deniers. Here's how the NYT describes that (and note the use of the word "explicitly":
More than half of the lawmakers who voted against Mr. McCarthy explicitly denied the results of the 2020 election, compared with about 15 percent of the 222 total members in the Republican caucus, according to a New York Times analysis.
But (as JPS suspected) that definition is quite restrictive. The NYT tells us later:
Fourteen of the 15 incumbents who voted against Mr. McCarthy were among the 139 House Republicans who, on Jan. 6, 2021, voted to overturn the 2020 Electoral College results. Comparatively, fewer than two-thirds of House Republican incumbents were objectors.
Glenn Greenwald -- like a lot of alleged "leftists" -- illuminates the thinking of the McCarthy opponents:
All Squad members voted in acclimation for Hakeem Jeffries as their Leader: the living, breathing embodiment of K Street sleaze, of everything the Squad claims to oppose.
Yes, it enabled Dems to be more orderly - obedience to leaders always does - but it's odd to be proud of it.
2:16 PM · Jan 3, 2023
Two things about that: 1.) Contempt for democracy is at the root of Greenwald/Bobertism. A tiny minority can only behave honorably by thwarting the will of the overwhelming majority and 2.) Policy outcomes are meaningless. It's all about performative purity. What policy goal are the 20 dissenters advancing here? What policy goal would the Squad be advancing by opposing Jefferies? It doesn't matter. In fact, a lack of a goal ensures no possibility of failure.
First compromise candidate floated to the press- Fred Upton, who just retired from the House but says he'd give Democrats equal representation on House committees if they supported him. If he threw in a debt limit increase deal would he get anywhere? If he got all Dems could he get six Republicans (since he can't vote for himself as a no-longer Representative)?
Yes. That's why the fucknuts kept mentioning Trump.
I mean, Trump as a potential Speaker. Not just in general.
I have plenty of priors here obviously but doesn't Trump's endorsement of McCarthy read like some aide doing their best to imitate him? Maybe it's the use of parallelism ("turn a great triumph into a giant & embarrassing defeat"), who knows.
112: In light of my 66, I have to say I find that offensive.
That's better. It's at least ambiguous.
I have never believed that the speaker and other officers of the House don't have to be members.
Of course we could just say that it's a coincidence that every speaker of commons since commons really got going was a member, as was every speaker of every colonial assembly.
I hate agreeing with right wing hacks, but the guy who analogized 'the House must choose a speaker' to 'the sports team must choose a captain' was on to something.
I thought it was the right wing hacks who were first putting up the idea that you didn't need to be in the House to be Speaker (before the election, as a way to have Trump's ass around for them to lick).
119-120: That sort of thinking rules out House Speaker Kid Rock though, so let's not rush to judgment. Outcomes matter.
Contrarian cranks have been talking about this much longer than Trump's political career.
I'm sure they have, but I don't recall hearing the talk before then.
After swearing in the members, is rules changes the next priority, then committees assignments?
McCarthy loses the fourth vote even with Trump's explicit endorsement. Still hilarious.
I think Trump designed the endorsement to be as ineffective as possible.
The part of the English (&Scottish) Revolution where people started saying they obeyed the king-in-Parliament as opposed to the king in person, but with Trump for king and HFC for Parliament.
Upton, of all people, suggests he could be a compromise Speaker and assign equal party numbers to each committee.
McCarthy lost another vote on the fourth ballot. One of his previous supporters voted "Present." This lowers the threshold in a way that benefits Jeffries.
I guess the pollyanna take re: debt ceiling is that it would be more likely to get cross over votes than the Speaker race.
134: That's how I see it. The owners of the Republicans aren't going to permit a default. And I think Biden has shown enough spine that he'll just defy Congress if it demands a default, in which case the decision will be made by the owners of the Supreme Court.
He apparently also doesn't have the votes to adjourn so I guess they're just going to keep voting.
I hope they finally mint the coin.
I don't second guess anyone's decision to focus on life outside of politics but I've been surprised to find that some people I would have expected to watch Congress more closely didn't realize there are people to McCarthy's right. To be fair, they seem to have thought McCarthy was the same kind of right-winger as the HFC.
Are all old comments gone? I went looking for a 2011 debt ceiling post and the thread is blank. Dropping old comments isn't necessarily a bad thing, fwiw.
139: Let us remember that the HFC membership favors McCarthy. The dissenters are a minority among kooks.
141 oh damn that sucks. Same thing with other posts on that page.
I hope it can be fixed. The archives are sacred.
They all appear to be safe and sound on the back end. I don't know how to make them reappear, but if you need to know what you said in the past 20 years, let me know. Please provide the time and date of the utterance.
I know there are betting sites tracking who will eventually be speaker; are there also bets for over/under on total rounds of voting that will be necessary?
It would be a damn shame to lose stuff like that fuck you clown thread
Sen Murphy I think it was who observed that some House members didn't run to be members of a governing body, but rather to be stars in a reality show.
My now-former rep Rosendale certainly fits that description.
I've been surprised to find that some people I would have expected to watch Congress more closely didn't realize there are people to McCarthy's right
I'm not sure that's the best way to describe it. There's very little policy separating them since McCarthy has given everywhere substantive he can. I think this is more procedural: a subset convinced that the more chaos they can sow and the more tantrums they can pitch at any time, the more they will be winning. (E.g., the demand for any single member to be able to call for a vote of no confidence in the speaker.)
Yeah, one striking thing about this whole deal is that there's basically zero substantive policy content involved on any side. It's all just chaotic obstructionism for its own sake.
This is part of why McCarthy can't win. He desperately wants to appease the hostage-takers and has tried capitulating as much as he can, but it's the hostage-taking itself that they want. Agreeing to any demands just emboldens them to make more.
And if one of their own were elevated to Speaker, inside of a week he would be the "corrupt establishment".
149: It's not any kind of policy difference because they don't have any real policy agenda. This is the "deconstruct the administrative state" crowd trying to do whatever it is that they do. They already chewed up Cantor, Boehner, and Ryan. Anybody that manages to win the gavel will immediately become the enemy next. When scalps are the entire point, concessions don't mean much.
Come on, you guys. I was typing.
It is an article of faith among these silly bastards that increasing the debt ceiling (for example) was a move by the Republican Communists to appease the Democratic Communists. If you have the power to sink The Communist Establishment, you take advantage. I'm not seeing how this ends ...
I am also really unsure what the actual endgame is going to be.
Anybody that manages to win the gavel will immediately become the enemy next.
And if it's not McCarthy, what Republican will accept this poisoned chalice?
Yeah, McCarthy's only advantage is that he actually wants the job. Will that be enough? Seems like no!
They would be perfectly happy to maintain the status quo of no Speaker. No Speaker means no bills pass the House means no funding bills and eventual government shutdown and debt limit breach. They can achieve everything they want by doing exactly what they're doing right now. The question is whether any on the Republicans who actually may want to pass laws eventually decide to work out a deal with Democrats.
I would be okay with Dems voting in McCarthy if it came with a deal for equal committee numbers, absolute majorities needed for subpoenas, and raising the debt ceiling to 2025 levels. I can't imagine even a bare majority of the GOP caucus would accept this.
I'd say they wangle the votes to adjourn tonight after this one and settle on Scalise tomorrow. Whether the Never Kevins get any of their demands met -- half the Rules Committee, e.g., or a super-low threshold for the motion to vacate the chair -- I have no idea.
But I think that they're not taking hostages for any specific aim (as noted above, McCarthy has already brilliantly given away the store without securing any additional votes). They want to claim his scalp, so it doesn't end till he bows out. In theory somebody could try to find a Compromise Candidate (again, as discussed above) but once we're pulling McCarthy's votes away from him I think another generic R is more likely than someone who's had to rely on democratic votes.
ETA: the only problem I see with the analysis in 160 is that no Speaker also means no investigations, which they very much do want.
I'm not sure if there are provisions needed to avoid shutdowns other than raise the debt limit. Incorporate those by reference if any.
163.last is a fair point but I can imagine them holding unofficial hearings at Four Seasons Total Landscaping and considering it good enough as long as the press covers it.
165: But then they can't haul Hillary before them.
I don't think McCarthy actually wants to overthrow the government and install a right-wing pseudo-dictatorship (elections with no real doubt who will win, etc.). They're obviously not voting on that right now, but I think that's where the surprise is coming in, the demonstration that a group might actually be willing to fuck things up enough in the hope that will create another opportunity for a takeover.
It took me awhile to get used to the idea of John Boehner and Paul Ryan being part of the center-right. I don't think I will ever reconcile myself to Marjorie Taylor Greene as the Voice of Reason.
They adjourned for a few hours to try to figure something out. We'll see.
149: E.g., the demand for any single member to be able to call for a vote of no confidence in the speaker.
The Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth has entered the chat.
171: My favorite new PLC anecdote is when the person presiding over the Sejm called for adjournment, one member shouted "I object!" and then he ran out, got on a horse, and rode out of town, leaving them all in limbo unable to complete the motion.
They just barely scraped together enough votes to adjourn again until tomorrow.
The sun'll come up, tomorrow. Bet your bottom dollar that tomorrow there'll be sun.
McCarthy has reportedly given on one of the most ridiculous demands, allowing a single Representative to call for a VONC against him; and some others. He really doesn't know how to anything else!
It really is remarkable how spineless he has been.
And how little he has gotten for it! Looks like Vote No. 7 is also a rejection.
It's extremely weird that of all the events since, say, 2015, this is actually what seems to be making things shift internally for the pragmatically greedy and asshole but non-performative-batshit-crazy Republicans. Obviously this is tied to precipitating factors, like Trump's underperformance in November. But it does feel like some tectonic plates are shifting in real time.
Eh, this is still ultimately DC drama. Not nearly as wide impact as last decade's shutdowns.
But the question is: Is this a consequential DC drama? What is going to happen to power relations within the Republican caucus, and what is going to happen in the power relations between Republicans and Democrats?
There are a number of possibilities, and I can't even guess at the outcome.
The earliest government shutdown I remember is 1995. It went on for a while. I had a professor who was chiding us for being uninformed, and he asked, "How many of you all know that the government is shut down right now?" I raised my hand because it did seem that I knew that, but I was extremely embarrassed to be caught not able to confidently say that I knew it.
I believe it was a first year seminar in semiotics, so I'm placing it as Fall 1995.
Same vote count. McCarthy gained nothing from his concessions last night.
Maybe he gets off on debasing himself?
I was young in '95 too, and the main way I remember it affecting me was that the ranger stations in the national park we were visiting were closed. I might have been seeing it in headlines, but that memory hasn't persisted.
In '11, I remember a Friday call saying the government official I had lined up for a guest lecture wouldn't be able to come if the government shut down next week.
183: There are a lot of possibilities, but I think it's most likely that in a couple of months, one way or another, they will have settled down to Obama-era-style grandstanding and investigations.
A reasonable prediction. But I keep wondering: Are there five Republicans who will refuse to accept any candidate who can win? The answer is not obvious to me.
The only thing that makes much sense is that they just want to take down McCarthy and then will vote for Scalise or whoever is the next choice of the party. Then again, 5 people is not very many people, so who knows.
None of it actually makes any sense, but it will be interesting to see what the holdouts do if and when McCarthy drops out and there's a different choice on offer.
It's not going to be soon though. They just started the eighth vote and McCarthy is still in.
Are they not just killing time until the government runs out of funding, so they can blame the shutdown on the Dems not cooperating by voting for Mccarthy rather than their own active malice?
His mistake was convincing himself that a party obsessed with dominance would reward submission.
Is Michelle Goldberg right? Is that what this is about?
https://www.nytimes.com/2023/01/04/opinion/kevin-mccarthy-speaker-race.html
Surely they're not going to keep doing this until July??
Even in 1855 it only took two months.
That government shutdown resulted in canceled excursions to historic revolutionary battlefield state parks during my 8th grade social studies trip to Colonial Williamsburg and environs. I'm still bitter.
197: No, they are not. Late-April early May, at the most.
Increasing chance the outcome is something exceedingly silly we can't yet predict. In the space of:
* No Speaker, committee slates are developed by GOP caucus & passed by majority vote & other procedures are made to bypass having one
* The Spartan solution: McCarthy and Trump are both elected Speaker, to serve concurrently
* McCarthy is elected after promising to run all decisions through a HFC internal vote
196: I think Goldberg came closer to it here, and that's why I wonder if five votes will ever be possible:
They don't want policy; they want airtime.
I'm curious what Jamie Raskin's team is doing to keep him healthy in all this. Is he leaving the floor as soon as he's done voting?
I'm also curious as to whether there would have been a different outcome had the GOP House whip vote gone differently--I don't know enough about party dynamics to know whether someone other than Emmer could have brought about a consensus choice or more members voting "present" more quickly.
This may come down to endurance. Who has the healthier caucus?
The only thing that makes much sense is that they just want to take down McCarthy and then will vote for Scalise or whoever is the next choice of the party.
When you evaluate what makes sense here, I think you have to imagine that you're dealing with 20 Donald Trumps. Trumpism isn't primarily about policy or outcomes, it's about self-promotion. Getting rid of McCarthy will satisfy that need, but so will getting rid of the next nominee. And the next one ...
On the other hand, they might just get bored, take the win, and move on to the next stunt.
That government shutdown resulted in canceled excursions to historic revolutionary battlefield state parks during my 8th grade social studies trip to Colonial Williamsburg and environs. I'm still bitter.
National parks, surely.
202.1: But the Constitution specifically says the House has to elect a Speaker!
Yeah, I don't think they can't just not have a Speaker.
I feel okay about most of the analysis in 163, except that they may not get there today.
I am enjoying watching round after round of negotiations, where McCarthy gives away more and more concessions in exchange for nothing at all, while the anti-him team (a) talks to the press about everything they're getting from him (Gaetz, on the record) and (b) huffs angrily about how the leaks to the press undermine their trust and make it harder to get to Yes (Perry, also on the record). It's all extremely funny.
Where in the constitution does it say the speaker can't be a dog?
Tomorrow is their traditional coup day, so I'm just generally uneasy.
Yes, I think what might work is if he gets them all in a room and starts throwing feces at them. Or else he could threaten to make a deal with Jeffries.
The disappearance of the middle of the House is pretty wild. Just looked up the Blue Dog caucus and they're down to 15 members from a high of 64 in 2008.
Predictit is charging 40 cents for a McCarthy contract, which seems high to me. Scalise at 37 seems more reasonable, but I don't think I'd buy that one, either.
If I had to commit to a bet on that list, I think I'd go with Stefanik at 5 cents.
I guess I could imagine a deal with the Dems that would make McCarthy speaker, but he won't get it without Dem help.
Can't the Speaker be a corporate person? They're superhuman!
Darn, I was going to come in and say 211, though I would have added value because I looked at the relevant text and found no such restriction.
McCarthy should play chicken with them and get his group plus the Democrats to agree to a plurality vote. If the holdouts blow up Republican control by continuing to vote for non-McCarthy candidates that's hard to spin to their voters.
Did the framers of the constitution have in mind that the Speaker should be the leader of the majority of Representatives, or did they have in mind the familiar, to them, model of the British House of Commons, where the Speaker is a neutral chair? If the latter, when and why did the models diverge?
That would require him to get his balls back from Trump.
220: Possibly around the time of Speaker Thomas Brackett Reed, who is supposed to be responsible for the traditionally stronger party discipline in the House.
The Honorable Speaker DJT Holdings Managing Member LLC II
220: Definitely the latter. The whole concept of majorities and minorities and partisanship in general was way off from what they were going for and indeed they were actively trying to avoid it.
220: The Speaker in the UK was not apolitical at the time of the US revolution. It had started moving away from being directly affiliated with the government under Arthur Onslow (in office from 1728-1761), but wasn't fully apolitical until the mid 19th century, according to wikipedia.
hard to spin to their voters.
219: Maybe, but if that were so -- and if they cared about that -- you'd think they'd see creating the current chaos as a negative. Lauren Boebert has been really out-front on all of this, and she barely squeaked by in her very Republican district.
As for playing chicken, that's exactly what the dissenters are doing. I don't think they're bluffing.
225 and 224 aren't entirely in opposition, many of the founders certainly didn't think it would be a *partisan* office, but I don't think it was ever expected to be an *apolitical* office the way it is in the UK.
The framers of the US Constitution hated political parties so much they designed a system that assumed they wouldn't become dominant and then immediately went out and formed them.
226: To the extent that they are in fact playing chicken, it's really hard to see the anti-Kevins blinking when he has revealed himself so clearly, over his entire career, to be so totally lacking in courage or convictions.
But I'm not sure that's exactly right, since the status quo is them having fun while he's getting humiliated. They're getting attention (the prime directive) and getting more and more concessions from McCarthy the longer this goes on (ancillary benefit). Why would they want this to end?
229: Yeah, the dissenters really have no incentive to wrap this up. They're getting everything they want right now.
Officially the most votes since the Civil War!
196: Blue Öyster Cult with the soundtrack --
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kpKJUa6IoBs
It's kinda hilarious that people keep changing what non-McCarthy candidate they're voting for. What's the point?
To pretend they are looking for a compromise candidate and suggesting other names.
Because it's boring just voting for the same person over and over again. Why not mix it up? The cameras turn in your direction when you say something new.
How's our pacing compared to the 1855 boys? More votes to count but I feel like they would've been talkier.
We're getting in more votes per day. It took them about two months, which works out to about 2.5 ballots per day and we're at 3.3 so far.
241: That will go down over the weekend, though. Which might be 3 days; that's the standard House way although I guess it might be different at the moment.
True, though it is hard to say what the weekend is going to look like with this still unresolved.
They might stick around and keep voting. They might have to, if they can't scrounge enough votes to adjourn again.
In theory, every House member could create an algorithm and we could do hundreds of votes a minute.
None of these guys have sworn their oaths of office yet. They could be up to anything!
It's kind of spellbinding how they keep voting over and over again without changing anything in between. Something something definition of insanity.
Even the vote totals don't change, although the candidates do. (One more sign that the holdouts aren't really negotiating in good faith.)
Apparently they're going to try to adjourn but they're not sure if they have the votes.
I fee like it's going to end with some kind of foul play, like preventing some members from reaching the floor so that they vote threshold changes. I mean there are no metal detectors any more....
The 1850s parallels are getting ominous...
Feels appropriate that Groundhog Day came out 30 years ago this year.
They successfully voted to adjourn until tomorrow. This counts as a win for the GOP these days.
Rank choice voting, where all the Republican candidates are rank.
There was a story or maybe just a tweet about representatives trying to help their constituents and getting responses like "you're not a representative yet, call back when you are."
250:
they keep voting over and over again without changing anything in between.
In theory something is changing because I've heard about McCarthy making concessions to the holdouts in his party. But either he's not having direct discussions with them that include phrases like "and in return, you will vote for me" and waiting to see what they respond, he's just making these concessions publicly and hoping they're enough to win the holdouts over, which would be stupid...or he is doing so and they're renegeing, which would be even more hilarious.
He and other leadership people really are meeting with the holdouts in between votes, and there are consistent press reports of "deals," but yeah, there doesn't seem to be any kind of commitment to vote for him.
They really do seem increasingly committed to never letting him win. They don't have an alternative candidate because they don't care about having a functional House, but they do care about denying him the Speakership.
The weird thing is that as far as I can tell none of this has anything to do with McCarthy specifically, just that he's been the leader recently. If McCarthy withdraws and is replaced by someone else, then they'll hate that person in a year too. They do this to every R house leader since Hastert.
You'd think the authoritarian tinge of their ideology would make Republicans more obedient to their leaders but somehow it doesn't.
I do wonder how many Republicans are paid foreign agents trying to weaken the United States.
So Hakeem Jeffries has now received more votes for speaker just this week than Nancy Pelosi did over her entire career.
265: It's certainly not zero. That said, given that Santos is voting for McCarthy and Trump is backing McCarthy, I don't think this is being driven by Putin.
A set of rules where any single member of a party can shut down the legislature any time they want is a great way to have a high risk of paralysis in a crisis.
You'd think the authoritarian tinge of their ideology would make Republicans more obedient to their leaders but somehow it doesn't.
I wouldn't want to be subservient to any leader that would have me as a follower.
Per the link in 215, the McCarthy contract is up to 56 cents.
This is the closest Trump has ever gotten to winning a popular vote.
Really the Republicans are just LARPing San Mateo, so they'll wrap it up next week.
I can never tell which California cities starting with "San" are real and which were just created for a movie or video game.
I surmise the way McCarthy pushes back is have his allies say they're prepared to prevail on his spinelessness in the opposite direction.
They're authoritarian leaders, not authoritarian followers. They don't bow to authority, they bow to brute force. In the House they all possess equal force, so it's knives out.
Yeah, it does seem like the relevant members are authoritarians in the sense that they all see themselves as authoritarian leaders ruling by decree. That doesn't work if everyone tries to do it, though. Someone has to submit to authority and do the actual work.
Authoritarians would want to paralyze the legislature so the executive can have more power, right? This seems to qualify. They don't like the current executive, but maybe the next one.
No. That's what authoritarian followers would want. Authoritarian leaders just want power for themselves.
Not surprised if they get over the hump today given the concessions.
And if so, the "value" in having a spineless shithead as a "leader" will be evident if your gill is aniti-governing.
You know what would be great? If behind the scenes, the holdouts really are conceding to KM each time that they'll change their vote, and then when the moment comes, they just can't resist screwing him over one more time. It's not just Lucy with the football, it's 16 Lucys all holding the same football.
I'm not sure authoritarianism is as explanatory as narcissism. Better authoritarians would be looking to hurt their principal enemies (Democrats) as soon as possible. Rather, they're looking to maximize eyes on them regardless of how much it lets them dominate.
This impulse won out a lot with Trump too, settling for attention over results.
What are we going to do today Kevin?
Same thing we do every day Elise- try to take over the House.
I wonder if they're going to start playing mind games, like having one or two move into his column and create a stir only to reverse it next vote.
Rather, they're looking to maximize eyes on them regardless of how much it lets them dominate.
It's a very social-media-total-clicks currency.
That's fine, as long as I didn't get scooped on 284.
I did an IMDB title search for Kevin and after Home Alone, the first two results were "Kevin Can Wait" and "Kevin Can Fuck Himself".
I just saw a home alone meme with the tagline "The only Kevin that can defend a house."
Kevin's fundamental problem is that neither his balls nor his soul is worth very much.
I'm coming to terms increasingly with the wrinkle in all this that "they" or "the dissidents" are not a unified bloc. There's at least 3, probably 4, who just hate mccarthy and will never vote for him (goode, gaetz, boebert, and one other whose name I forget). The function of this group is to take the true margin for error from 4 defections down to 0-1. Some of the remaining 18 are participating in these negotiations where they keep on getting more stuff without ever saying yes, and there may come a point whether they have checked off their entire wishlist and/or get bored, but it's not obvious that it's all 18 that he needs.
The last reporting I saw suggested that Team Kevin's plan was to make a deal with Chip Roy and his 10 Freedom Caucus buddies and then somehow "put pressure" on the remaining holdouts to come along, which has a kind of underpants-gnomes feel to me.
John Ganz persuasively puts together the narcissism with the authoritarianism, contra my attempt to disentangle:
But it's a mistake to assume that this vacuousness and irresponsibility is something ultimately totally innocuous. From the ranks of such losers also come history's butchers: without purpose, without aim, and without pertinence, they seek to make their mark and prove themselves through destruction alone.
291 -- Just a warning: don't try looking for meaning peering into the abyss that is Matt Rosendale. That way lies madness.
(Up until this week, he was my rep.)
Ha, thanks -- I think his was actually the last name I'd seen on the really-never-Kevin list, so I'll dial up the cynicism a bit, as to him and the whole framework.
Twelfth vote
REP MCCARTHY: "If debasement be the food of votes, pile on
Give me excess of it, that, surfeiting,
The Speakership may weaken, but as I."
McCarthy did gain a few votes but still lost on the twelfth ballot.
His problem continues to be that he's running out of stores to give away and still hasn't secured enough votes.
Non-USian delurking here so may not understand the situation. It sounds like he's promised to allow no confidence votes if any member of his caucus calls for one. So let's say he wins but with 3 Republicans still holding out. Doesn't that just mean the final holdouts can keep calling no confidence votes in him forever?
298: Yes it does. Presumably his thinking is that if he can win the initial vote he'll win the subsequent votes that the holdouts call, but that's a big if at this point.
If he does somehow manage to pull through he'll be by far the weakest speaker in recent decades, even up against some pretty stiff competition.
Right, especially because it gives every member of the conference the power to threaten that if he doesn't give them what they want on any given issue, they'll join the holdouts to kick him out.
All assuming he gets 3 of the remaining 7 to join him in the first place.
He's managed to lower expectations to the extent that the story is that he finally managed to get more votes than Jeffries.
January 6th is once again the day of his spiritual depantsing.
What makes any of the promises negotiated binding? Are there new written bylaws (that is, amendments to the house rules) drafted that will get voted on by the new members then enforced somehow? If a general answer is insanely complicated, then how about: Have there been successful challenges to speaker actions in the past on the basis of the written rules+amendments?
Whatever concessions he makes on procedure will be written into the rules package that the House will need to approve whenever they manage to elect a Speaker and get sworn in. That package will also have enforcement procedures. There definitely are some but I don't know the details or how they've been used in the past. The ultimate enforcement mechanism on McCarthy himself would be the Motion to Vacate threshold, of course. He'll basically be a permanent hostage to every single member.
Thirteenth vote underway, no formal nomination of a non-McCarthy Republican. Interesting! Still some votes for Jordan so far.
Looks like McCarthy will also lose this one.
305, 306: Which also means the rules package can fail and throw the House back into this.
In fact there are rumors already that moderate Republicans may join with Dems to vote down the rules package! Seems unlikely to me but who knows.
Something strange like that happened in the Ohio House -- relatively moderate Republicans voted with the Dems to elect a relatively moderate Republican speaker, defeating the ultra-conservative favorite.
https://pluribusnews.com/news-and-events/upset-in-ohio-as-dems-join-gop-to-pick-new-house-speaker/
I guess this kind of thing is more likely in state legislatures, because hardly anyone is paying attention.
I think the main reason it happens more at the state level is that state legislatures have a lot more hard constraints on things they have to do than Congress does.
Thanks. So what happens if someone calls no confidence then? Is other business allowed first or can the holdouts just prevent congressional business by calling no confidence whenever he tries to schedule a vote on a bill?
That actually depends on what they put in the rules package. Historically a Motion to Vacate was considered a "privileged motion" and was subject to an immediate vote. They changed that a few years back to make it non-privileged in most cases but they could easily change it back now.
I mean, "easily" under present circumstance might be a stretch. But it would be no harder than anything else they're trying to do.
Thanks again. Kind of wonder if this is the final giveaway that would get him over the line.
They're trying to adjourn again until they can get two missing member back.
The two members are McCarthy votes, so getting them back lowers the number of holdouts he still needs from three to two. Still no guarantee he can get there.
They did manage to adjourn until 10PM.
Gaetz says he's running out of things to ask for but still doesn't commit to voting yes.
This article is the best attempt I've seen to explain the Speakership fight as if the Republicans weren't fundamentally unserious about legislating. No doubt the rules and committee assignments make a difference if you're actually trying to pass laws but I still have a hard time believing that a House where McCarthy won on the first ballot would function substantially differently than whatever House we're going to get if the Republicans if the Republican still have majority control. They're just going to alternate between defecating on the Constitution and wiping their faces with it.
Looks like McCarthy is losing this one by one vote.
Lol.
More antebellum vibes: some sort of near-scuffle between Mike Rogers (Alabama) and Gaetz, just after McCarthy visibly failed to persuade Gaetz to change his vote.
I just saw the video and I think that was a bit of dramamongering. Technically Rogers was "pulled away" from moving toward Gaetz, but when he started moving toward Gaetz he was in the aisle and Gaetz was four seats in, with the three seats in between occupied. And Rogers did nothing more than move in a speed and direction vaguely suggesting intimidation, no raising of fists or anything; nor were they even in arm's reach of each other.
The guy pulling him away (security?) moved in quickly from a distance away and first grabbed Rogers by both shoulders, then moved one hand over Roger's whole face, so it was a very overt step-the-fuck-back. His speed and precision made me wonder if Rogers (who entered the wide frame only several seconds before) had been expressing intent of something earlier.
Voting on motion to adjourn until Monday.
Looks like Gaetz just caved, and they're going for vote 15.
At least McCarthy thinks Gaetz caved. We'll see.
The ultimate troll move would be for Boebert and Gaetz to vote for Jeffries.
It would be incredible if Gaetz did cave but now someone else holds it up. This is the problem with relying on multiple nihilists.
Biggs and Crane abstaining this time. Which means McCarthy's finally going to get to eat the shit sandwich?
Yeah, looks like he's got it if there aren't any more surprises. Gaetz voted Present so he was indeed lying but it probably doesn't matter.
had been expressing intent of something earlier
I have no pistols! Let him fire! Stand out of the way and let the assassin fire!
There is no way I'm staying up tonight to watch the Rules debate.
They finally got it on the fifteenth vote. They'll swear in the members tonight but the rules vote is postponed until Monday.
Apparently Rogers was sore that Gaetz was holding out for a subcommittee position in his committee, Armed Services.
313: The Columbus Dispatch columnist that covers the Ohio Statehouse has a different take, "What if anything that means in terms of ideology is anybody's guess, because in today's General Assembly the central day-to-day question isn't conservatism vs. liberalism, but -thanks to term-limits - 'What's my next job?'"
I know people at ODMH, if they need help.