I agree, which is why we need the most experienced person at the Dem helm, and the person Trump is scared of.
Trump is a lot of things but I don’t think he’s scared of anyone. He thinks he’s a combination of God and Einstein.
What does this have to do with the actual process of the winning? Does she control the spending of this money or is she just helping?
If she is not controling the spending and how it is done specifically, it is a non-relevant observation to the question of the winning.
So supposing the Republican coup succeeds and Gabbard wins. How are those 200 Republicans going to explain their vote to their primary voters come 2020 when thanks the the Right Wing Noise Machine Gabbard has become “the most vile liberal leftist socialist corrupt obstructionist politician in history”?
Right. It’s not just a one-time thing to screw the Dems and Pelosi, nyaah-nyaah! It’s a decision that has major implications for the next two years.
Whoever is Speaker has tremendous control over the legislative agenda. Why would the Republicans vote for the most leftist candidate, thereby making it likely that the leftist agenda will be the one that the house is considering for the next two years.
Specifically, a majority of those who vote for a candidate. Those absent, or only voting ‘present,’ don’t enter into the calculation.
However, this is tradition. There is no law, no rule, that says this has to be the case.
People don’t care. If the right letter is in front of the person’s name, that’s all that matters.
And, I’ll note, that I expressly said that we would never get to this point. It’s a threat, not a prediction. But it is a threat that can’t be ignored.
I was floored to learn that the House rules have nothing to say about the process for electing a Speaker at the start of a congressional session. In a sense I guess this is inevitable – the Speaker is elected before they adopt rules. In fact this occurs before the Members are even sworn in!
32 Dems voted against Pelosi and 3 ballots were blank.
Guess she needs to find a lot more people who will take a "bribe . "
I think more than a few have already made the “I will vote against her in the party vote, but I will obviously not vote for the Republican” line.
This line says it all:
“In 2016, Pelosi lost 63 votes in the House Democratic Caucus when she ran for Democratic leader against Tim Ryan. Ultimately, however, just four voted against her on the floor in 2017.”
there are other options other than voting for her or a GOP member.
BTW I noticed the 3 top Dems in the house were all born prior to the Pearl Harbor attack. I guess they can’t find anyone under the age of 75 to help run things?
Yeah, if there’s only the one candidate, everyone who said that they would vote against her has a pretty strong out; what are they supposed to do, vote for the Invisible Pink Unicorn?
Like what? If they abstain, that lowers the majority threshold, essentially vote for the Republican. If the vote for a third person, then it would just be a revote over and over again.
if she can’t win on the 1st ballot or the 2nd then maybe she could drop out and the Dems could find another candidate -for example Tim Ryan of Ohio. But then again in DC quite a few people don’t give up power unless they are 6 feet under so it’s not likely that she would step aside while she’s still above ground.
There’s a structural bias that favors age in the rules the Democratic caucus operates under. They use seniority to determine committee leadership. That confines some of the most relevant experience to leading the caucus as a whole to a small group that has been in Congress for a long time.
Hakeem Jeffries is 48.
Apparently Pelosi has agreed to some form of future leadership apprentice program.
The New York Times in 2015, on Paul Ryan’s 200-43 nomination to be the Speaker: He “won the overwhelming support of his colleagues in the nominating contest and is now set to be installed as speaker.”
The New York Times in 2018, on Nancy Pelosi’s 203-32 nomination: “The defection of 32 Democrats signaled that she could still face a divisive fight to lead the House just as the party assumes control.”
:rolleyes:
Well, half a vote really.
With 235 House Dems, Pelosi still wins the Speakership if 17 Dems vote for someone else. But she also wins the Speakership if 34 of them vote ‘present.’
Yeah, this is just the equivalent of a primary, not the general election. Sure, there are some Democratic reps who would prefer some other Democrat (but not very many, even of them). But how many would prefer a Republican?