The failure from Democrats pisses me off too and I hope to see somebody else as Speaker than Jeffries.
But in the end it was functionally irrelevant to the vote. There were also Republicans held up for the same reason as Democrats, and if they had all voted it still would have failed. Johnson would have extended the vote because he’s still Speaker and the Republicans still have control of the House.
This was just a mic drop by Massie on his way out. We were always going to have to wait until January for meaningful things to start happening.
But had ALL the Dems showed up, the vote on sending it to committee would have passed by too narrow a margin, and the process would have automatically progressed the eight articles of impeachment to a floor vote.
They COULD have pulled a win out of a loss, forcing each member of the House to vote on the articles of impeachment individually and thus be seen for what they are, and chose not to.
And again, the fact that Republicans were also stuck in some traffic doesn’t matter. The fact that the vote you think was irrelevant doesn’t matter. The fact that Johnson is still Speaker doesn’t matter. The fact that Massie wanted to have a final say really doesn’t matter.
All of that is just excuses and whataboutism doesn’t address the point that the current leader failed in providing leadership on a important vote, especially when the vote failed by a mere seven votes.
The failure from Democrats pisses me off too and I hope to see somebody else as Speaker than Jeffries.
But in the end it was functionally irrelevant to the vote. There were also Republicans held up for the same reason as Democrats, and if they had all voted it still would have failed. Johnson would have extended the vote because he’s still Speaker and the Republicans still have control of the House.
This was just a mic drop by Massie on his way out. We were always going to have to wait until January for meaningful things to start happening.
Not necessarily. Impeachments are privileged and handled differently than a regular bill. This was not a vote on the impeachment itself; this was a vote on whether to send it to committee (where it would obviously time out and die) or to advance it to a full floor vote. Eleven Dems and seven Rs skipped the vote, and it passed 211 to 204.
But had ALL the Dems showed up, the vote on sending it to committee would have passed by too narrow a margin, and the process would have automatically progressed the eight articles of impeachment to a floor vote.
They COULD have pulled a win out of a loss, forcing each member of the House to vote on the articles of impeachment individually and thus be seen for what they are, and chose not to.
And again, the fact that Republicans were also stuck in some traffic doesn’t matter. The fact that the vote you think was irrelevant doesn’t matter. The fact that Johnson is still Speaker doesn’t matter. The fact that Massie wanted to have a final say really doesn’t matter.
All of that is just excuses and whataboutism doesn’t address the point that the current leader failed in providing leadership on a important vote, especially when the vote failed by a mere seven votes.
I’ve already agreed that the current leader failed on an important issue. But those things you listed all matter very much actually.