Yup.
No way McConnell forces the vote till he knows he has the votes and once he has them in line he will waste no time holding the vote so they do not change their minds. Hence the rush.
He’s a class-A asshole but he’s been doing this a long time and knows the ins-and-outs. He has the votes which is why he has called the vote.
If you don’t get 2 Republicans more defecting against or not showing up, than Dems defecting for, he’s in. Report or no report.
Seat him or not, anyway, we’ve wound up with a campaign into the midterm homestretch where the question will be “are you going to LET them do this?” from whoever doesn’t prevail. If McConnell sees that a *martyrdom *of Kavanaugh can rally the faithful in one month, he may decide it’s worth it.
Ravenman might actually do so (I’m reluctant to answer for him), although I suspect that he doesn’t (as I suppose you also suspect).
Here, however is a perfectly valid reason for him (or any person who does not HATE the United States of America) to not “extend that same bit of faith to Kavanaugh”:
He was nominated to the Court by an America-hating fuckstick.
This, pure and simple, is sufficient reason for him (or ANYONE nominated by said fuckstick for ANY position) to receive 100 resounding “NO” votes for confirmation.
And it would be the outcome of every confirmation vote if the Senate consisted ONLY of Senators who do not hate the United States of America.
And people say that Pubbies aren’t interested in maintaining our national infrastructure? :dubious:
Won’t that unnecessarily depress his own side. Get him in go to the polls with a recent hard fought victory saying give us a proper workable majority so we,won’t let them do this again.
I’m agreeing with AK. The buzz I hear is, “We held our nose and voted for this guy because: he wasn’t Hillary, he was going to clean up what these bums were doing, and the Supreme Court was going to have some vacancies. If they can’t get the guy we want on the Court, while having the House, Senate, and Presidency, then why should we vote for these guys again?! If they won’t fight, why should we?”
Dumping Kavanaugh now would be a really bad idea for the Republican leadership, if they like being the party in charge. (They may not.)
Besides, I’m pretty sure they have the votes. We’ll see.
I think McConnell already knows republicans are in for a beating in upcoming elections. Or maybe not but he will assume they are.
Given that he has every incentive to stack in as much conservative crap as he can before the election happens.
Getting Kavanaugh in is a 100% must do before the midterms for him.
His supporters will support him no matter what and they tend to be motivated voters. If the Dems can overcome that he is fucked no matter what so best to do as much damage as he can if he leaves.
But face it…the guy will never lose an election and he knows it and even if he does he is old enough to not really give a shit.
I haven’t posted for a while because this is like banging your head against the wall. Politically, now, I think it is a very interesting dynamic playing out.
Flake is an uncertainty right now. But if there is one person right now who I predict will get Collins and Murkowski to hold serve, it is: (drum roll) Joe Manchin.
Here in West Virginia, he has a comfortable, but not huge lead. If he votes against Kavanaugh, I predict he loses. There is a month left for attack ads that old “liberal Joe” votes against guns, for abortions, and now against conservative judges. If he votes to confirm Kavanaugh, he gets to play the “I’m an independent Democrat and I call them how I see them and I am for West Virginia” and he wins.
The flip side of this is that if the vote is 50-50 with Pence breaking the tie and Manchin is one of the yes votes, his career in the Senate will be serving on the Towel Restocking Committee for the Senate locker room.
So his political calculus is almost certainly that he has to vote yes, but cannot be the deciding yes. However, to pull off this trick, he cannot come out now as a yes. That’s why I believe that his recent comments (I will look at his adult life…as a father) signal that he will be pressing behind the scenes for confirmation in the typical aw shucks Joe way.
As far as Flake, Murkowski, and Collins, it is difficult to see why they would have insisted on an FBI investigation, see that nothing has come from it, yet still vote no. We are exactly where we were before Ford’s allegations came out.
If you were a Kavanaugh supporter prior to the allegations, then I see nothing that has surfaced with any sort of evidentiary support that would change your mind. If you were a Kavanaugh opponent, then the allegations have certainly not changed your mind. And if you were on the fence, I see a bloody draw that has damaged both Kavanaugh and Ford that would leave you to decide the case on the merits of the status quo ante.
All of this has taught me to make sure that my daughter never, ever, ever does anything bad or posts stuff on social media that is the least bit controversial. That is the sad result of this process.
And as I’ve said - if Manchin votes yes to appease the Nazis, then fuck him, he’s no better than they are and he doesn’t deserve to be reelected.
This is bonkers.
McConnell has called the vote. He would not do that if he was not sure he has the votes.
We can speculate how many dems or reps cross lines but without a surprise McConnell knows he has it locked in.
How about if they post on social media, not because they’ve done anything bad, but because of having been sexually assaulted? Seems lots of women are doing that these days.
A lot of dads are suddenly finding out about the bad shit that other men forced on their daughters years or decades ago. I hope your daughters never have to face the choice of whether or not to tell you. But I hope you have a better take-away from this if it happens.
These women are stepping forward out of both courage and outrage, and out of pain buried and hidden for too long. They don’t deserve to be silenced, and they don’t deserve to have their pain ridiculed or minimized, or placed on the same level as a man’s fear of a false accusation. And they damn sure don’t deserve to have men go, “why didn’t they come forward at the time?” Because even if everything goes right and their attacker is found guilty, the result is often like these cases.
Until our system at least gives them a decent chance at justice when they are assaulted and violated, women will have really only two choices: be controversial, or bear their pain silently.
I would venture that he feels he has the votes and some reserve to deal with unforeseen events.
That’s one possibility, but maybe not. Let’s say that McConnell honestly does not know how Flake, Murkowski, Collins, or Manchin will vote. What does he gain by pushing the vote off for another week or two?
As I predicted, absolutely nothing has come from this investigation, nor will it ever. Do we want a few more weeks of hearing about how in 1985 Kavanaugh pissed off a hotel balcony in Ocean City, MD? Do we want to interview fifty more witnesses, have some say Kav was wonderful, others that he was a drunk?
If you are one of those four senators, what else do you want to hear?
I hope Flake doesn’t flake-out. He’s not running again.
I do think he’s planning a presidential run, though.
Now that’s a repub I could get behind.
He has a reputation for that, but even before anyone has seen the FBI report? I don’t think so.
McConnell hopes he has the votes. And he might. Unlikely there will be any surprises in that report. McConnell, McGahn, Rosenstein and Wray made sure of that.
Still… in desperate circumstances, McConnell also likes to bully his members. He’ll force them to vote even if he doesn’t have the votes, in order to make those voting against his agenda declare themselves and have the effect of energizing Republicans to come to the polls next month.
And remember, he didn’t have the votes for repealing the ACA. He still called for a vote.
McConnell is probably trying to look confident. It’s all optics, folks.
Gotta see what leaks out today, if anything. Flake, Collins, Murkowski and Manchin will all vote the same way, that was their deal. If you don’t see one of them signal today that there was something in the FBI interviews to flip him/her (and no other crazy shit happens today), then they’re all yes.
Not only was the supplemental FBI investigation a joke (it didn’t even rise to the level of a sham), but the process by which Senators can review the resulting report is an even bigger joke:
Yeah, that’s with debate starting tomorrow morning.
If you notice, Flake always talks tough on Trump, but he consistently voted in lock step with Trump’s agenda. Flake is clearly saying the right things to score points during the general election as a Trump critic, but trying to preserve his radical right wing voting record so he can survive the GOP primary.