These jackasses are many things, but “stupid” or “politically unsavvy” aren’t among them. If anything, politically unsavvy should be used to describe NC Dems. The bulk of our gains lately have IMO been due to work by citizen activists like NCAE, the Moral Monday Movement, the ACLU, and others. Our Democratic party has some good members, but I’m not always impressed by them.
In case folks are wondering about whether the Republican party really made the claim about no vote, I wanna break it down:
The person in charge of that decision would be the House Rules Chairman David Lewis (R).
House Minority leader Darren Jackson claims that he asked Lewis and was verbally that there wouldn’t be a vote, and he and the Dems relied on that assurance.
2a) Lewis claims he just said there wouldn’t be votes on two other issues. Hmm.
WRAL reporter Laura Leslie has released a text exchange between her and Lewis, in which he says, in response to her question, “No votes at 8:30”.
3a) Lewis admits to telling her this, but claims it’s because he thought there wouldn’t be any votes.
Lewis’s story, then, is that when he was talking to Democrats, he told them there wouldn’t be votes on two mini-items, but when he was talking to the news, he told them there wouldn’t be any votes, because his understanding of what votes there would be were different when he was undocumented and when his words were documented.
Some folks might be naive enough to believe his conflicting claims.
ETA: And as we’ve seen so often in recent years, I doubt there will be any punishment, no recriminations or any tangible consequences at all for this. In fact, I won’t be surprised to find that he and the NC GOP get even more funding, more votes and more support because of this maneuver.
I would urge all Democratic officials to look on all GOP officials (and supporters) as untrustworthy in any way for the foreseeable future.
Regarding this point, are you sure? Lewis wasn’t even in the chamber when the controversial vote was held. It seem like it’s up to the Speaker of the House, Tim Moore, that he is “the person in charge of that decision”.
So it was all just a big misunderstanding and purely a coincidence that the Republicans decided to hold a very important vote that they knew the Democrats would block at a time when it just happened that most of the Democrats had thought that no votes would be held while it just happened that all of the Republicans decided to show up. And the speaker just didn’t happen notice that most of the opposition was missing before he decided to call the vote. Just a wild crazy coincidence, nothing the least bit underhanded here.
Yeah, Dems have the votes to sustain a veto, and in normal times, Republicans would hold that pro forma vote, and then move on to phase 2, i.e., negotiating a compromise. Cooper’s been trying to get them to that stage.
But they don’t want to admit that they lack the power they held for nearly a decade. They’re trying every dirty trick they can think of to subvert democracy (handy reminder: a minority of Tarheels voted for Republicans in 2018, and the map they were elected under was just declared unconstitutionally gerrymandered, calling into doubt the legitimacy of their governance).
I’d lay even odds on their figuring out another dirty trick that lets them override the veto. They ain’t stupid, just awful.
I think the main mistake the Dems make is that they think the public will see them taking the high road and the Republicans “fighting dirty”. The truth is that most Americans are disinterested, and the ones who engage with politics are usually the most partisan. Combine this with the generally cynical attitude most Americans have about politics and trying to sell people on “our party respects norms” just doesn’t work.
The Dems themselves should fight dirty when it makes sense. It’s a lot easier to sell a swing voter on “we fought for the Medicaid expansion, and now your medical expenses are more manageable” than “well we didn’t actually get you the Medicaid expansion, but we took the high road against the dirty tricksters who blocked it and we’re hoping you can elect more of us to keep taking the high road.”
It would have been nice if the veto override was voted down yesterday and that would have happened if the Republicans played it straight.
I made no comments about their trustworthiness or the likelihood of that happening. What they’re doing is a perversion of democracy even if it’s technically within the rules.
It would be nice if they stopped acting that way. That’s completely orthogonal to the fact that that almost certainly will not happen.
But the Raleigh News & Observer reports that only 2 Dems were at a 9/11 ceremony.
They also report
Maybe there were lies and dirty tricks. But the meme that dems couldn’t vote b/c they were at a 9/11 ceremony is false, if the Raleigh News & Observer is to be believed. Even the Washington Post issued a clarification, but I can’t seem to find the exact wording at the moment.
Perhaps our secular cynicism has blinded us. We see dark conspiracy in an interlocking web of unintended consequence and random coincidence. But might it not have a more benign source?
I speak, of course, of the divine hand of Providence, that most Supreme Court, which has for so long graced the GOP with approval and assistance! For so very long!
Nice quote, David–thanks for saying that in your out loud voice!
By the way, David Lewis is the dude who earlier this month said there wouldn’t be any budget-override votes on the morning of 9/11. I don’t know he has a lot of friends left in Raleigh.
This is good news in the same way that finding out your antibiotics are starting to clear up your strep infection is good news. You wish you didn’t have the bad news in the first place, but hey, at least things are starting to look up.
It cracks me up that so many GOP operatives were delighted when the SCOTUS said they couldn’t get involved in partisan gerrymanders and here we are with the court in NC saying, “No assholes, you can’t do this.” Unless I’m missing something I don’t see where the GOP could appeal and have a chance of getting this tossed out.
Best news I heard in weeks. Let’s hope it spreads to other states.