OK, let’s drop this exchange here, with my final note about one point you state unequivocally: “Having Liz Cheney in the House with “D” by her name does not in and of itself do actually do Democrats any good. It’s only useful for them if Cheney actually votes with them.” YES, it does do the Dems good, all by itself. Caucusing with the Dems makes for one more D and one fewer R in the House, which means the GOP will have to find a different D district to turn into an R district. Even if Cheney NEVER votes Pelosi’s way (she did 7% of the time in the last Congress) that’s an advantage for the Dems, and an irritant for the Rs. You seem to have great difficulty grasping this simple point (is that a personal attack too? Glad you’re not modding) so I’ll repeat it once more for your benefit. You can go on ignoring it, of course.
An added side-benefit to this from Pelosi’s point of view is that it would add to her rhetoric about the Dems being the party, not of liberalism, but of sanity and reality, and the GOP being the party of lies, cultism, and looniness. She could legitimately claim that the Dems welcome anyone who holds rational positions, even someone as far to the right as Liz Cheney, and that it is a big tent party that treats its minority members with respect, however much they disagree with many of her policies.
You realize that only helps the Democrats if she actually votes for Pelosi? Saying she will caucus with the Dems doesn’t mean anything. The only things that matter are votes.
This. The House isn’t the Senate, where the Majority Leader is selected in caucus. The Speaker is elected by the whole House, and it doesn’t matter who you caucus with. All that matters is who you vote for.
It’s actually worse than that. Even in the Senate, the fact that there is a Majority Leader is determined by a vote of the whole Senate. Each Congress opens with an Organizing Resolution that sets up the rules for how the Senate operates. There’s no actual requirement that a “Democratic” Senator vote for the Democratic Organizing Resolution.
We actually saw this process in action this year, as the 50/50 Senate resulted in negotiations for power sharing. Technically, the Democrats could have rammed through an Organizing Resolution that gave them the Majority, with the VP as a tie-breaker. But traditionally 50/50 splits result in an Organizing Resolution that’s friendlier to the “minority”.
Now, having a Republican switch parties before an election and publicly vow to vote for the Democratic Organizing Resolution if elected, provided the Democrats actually got at least 50 seats, would actually be useful to the Democrats. But that only motivates voters if that deal is public.
If Liz Cheney campaigns in 2020 as a Democrat, with a public pledge to vote for a Democratic Organizing Resolution in the House and for whoever the majority of the Democratic caucus votes for as Speaker, that deal actually does make some sense for the Democrats. But it’s only a motivation for Democratic primary voters and Democrats in the general election if that deal is public.
But a public deal like also probably costs her significant support among never-Trumpers and “sane” Republicans who are, after all, still Republicans. And it still probably leads to a lot of voter apathy among Democrats, many of whom just may not show up to vote if their choice is between Cheney and a Trumper.
I still don’t think that deal makes much sense for Liz Cheney. Running in a crowded Republican primary, aiming for a plurality, and counting on the support of never-Trumpers, rational Republicans, strategic cross-primary Democratic voters, incumbency, and electoral inertia still seems like a much better chance for her, without the political costs of a public party switch. The same for a run as a principled conservative Independent in the general.
If there are more Rs than Ds in the House, then McCarthy controls the agenda, and if there are more Ds than Rs, Pelosi does. Underlying this deal is that of course Cheney will support Pelosi for Speaker. What, she’s going to support the people who kicked her out? The whole point of making this (odious) deal from her POV is that she will no longer vote for any R as Speaker.
This. There’s a difference between the people mentioned earlier switching parties as part of a political realignment (Phil Gramm, Richard Shelby, the old school southern Democrats in general) vs. someone like Arlen Specter who had likely would have lost a primary and no longer fit in. The latter type of party change almost always signals the end of a political career, and I’m sure Liz Cheney knows that.
IMHO what’s shocking about this particular political realignment is how fast it happened. At this point it’s obvious that today’s Republican Party is not the same Republican Party of GWB, John McCain, and Mitt Romney. I think, however, that it’s not even the same party that elected Trump in 2016 and that lost the 2018 midterms. This current party seems to have been born some time within the last 1 to 1 1/2 years, along with the simultaneous death of the prior version of the Republican Party. I’m not sure exactly how it happened so quickly and what triggered it, but that’s the conclusion I draw from the available evidence.
But she also couldn’t vote for any current D (especially Pelosi) and be true to her principles. Of course if she votes for Pelosi she’ll never be electable in WY again.
Most likely (much better than 50/50 chance) she is unelectable in WY ever again, no matter what she does. My idea is to have her speaking against the Rs who kicked her to the curb and speaking out most forcefully against them, which joining the Dems would definitely help her accomplish.
Speaking against the Republicans by repudiating every core value she has based her career on and joining with the Democrats. Talk about cutting off your nose to spite your face.
Pelosi welcoming her into the Democratic fold is just making the point that the Dems have a great toleration for various points of view, all based on the facts and the real world, and that the GOP mandates that their members all proclaim in public their batshit-craziness. I think that’s what they need to run on for a few cycles: “They’re crazy, and we’re not, whatever you make of some of our policies–heck, we don’t even agree with each other on all major issues, but we’re not chewing up the carpet and frothing at the mouth.” And for Cheney, it can be as simple as “Fuck me? Oh, no, my friends, fuck you.”
Which she’s prevented from spending the next year and a half doing… how? She’ll be even freer to speak her mind if she’s not tied in to trying to “hold her seat”, and after 2023 has a prime-time show on which to skewer the Trumpians.
Threre seems to be a flaw in the presuppositon here: Given that Liz Cheney does not work for the sake of what you or I want, what if shedoes not care to “hold her seat” for that price?
It’s not. At all. I don’t want to be a jerk, but I’m really having trouble understanding how you think all of this works. Each individual member of the House votes as an individual. On average, a Democrat will probably vote with any given Democrat more often than they will with any given Republican. But, even in this highly partisan day and age, an individual Democrat and an individual Republicans can find themselves on the same side of a bill. Pelosi voted in line with Trump’s stated position 17.6% of the time.
You’re having trouble understanding how I think all this works? But you’re not having any trouble at all understanding Telemark’s absurd overstated assertion that Cheney’s
?
I understand perfectly how the House works, and what a Representive’s vote signifies and what it does not signify. I am finding it sort of funny that you’re professing to be baffled.