@erikalyn none have run for Speaker because given the Democrats' voting strategy they can't mathematically win.

So there's no point trying.

The current vote distribution gives all of the power to the nut jobs, which really stinks, but that's just the reality based on this situation.

@volkris It was Republicans who gave so much power to the nut jobs when they changed the rules to elect McCarthy. They did this to themselves. And if someone wants to fix that by earning Democrats' votes, they're going to have to make some overtures. It's not on Democrats to fix this for them.

@erikalyn stories about the rule changes have been pretty exaggerated. Heck, you could even say the nut jobs were fooled with pretty inconsequential rule changes that the idiots didn't realize were inconsequential.

For example, take the headline issue of the number of people required to move to declare the chair vacant. Lowering the number to one really doesn't matter if sanity is just going to boot the nut jobs out of the room anyway.

Unfortunately, Democrats backed the nut jobs and empowered them to shut the chamber down. The rules change didn't actually make a difference there so long as Democrats were willing to partner with the nuts.

And it still doesn't matter now because whether the rule is reverted, so long as Democrats are willing to shut the chamber down with the nut jobs, it means there are still votes to close the place regardless of the rules.

So long as Democrats are voting with the nut jobs, the nut jobs are basically in charge. So here we are.

People really need to reevaluate their decisions to re-elect their representatives based on this circus.

@volkris

The idea that Democrats should have voted to save McCarthy is so bizarre to me. McCarthy, who voted to overturn the election results, who reneged on the budget deal, who has proven himself untrustworthy, who can't control his own party, who offered zero concessions in exchange for their votes. He's no moderate. Plus the majority party chooses the speaker, so this was never their problem to solve. I think we'll have to agree to disagree on that, though.

@erikalyn nobody was asked to save McCarthy! I really hate that that narrative made the circles a couple of weeks ago.

The question in front of the House was not about saving McCarthy. The question was, do you want the house to keep functioning, or do you want these nut jobs to be in the driver seat, shut the whole place down, and then let them have huge amounts of influence to choose the next speaker?

(Well okay, the first part of that at least)

So Democrats backed the nut job effort to shut the house down, setting up this situation where they now have a huge amount of influence in what happens next.. Great.

So I'm saying we need to hold the Democrats loudly accountable for their vote to shut down the House and hand control over like this.

It has nothing to do with McCarthy. That dramatic storytelling got a bunch of clicks for certain journalists, but it was a gross misleading version of what question was actually before the chamber.

And yes, I was quite irritated about it🙂 because it lets elected official off the hook to buy that distraction.

@volkris It's what the vote literally was about, though, whether to support McCarthy or not. If they had voted the other way, they would also be in a bad situation, stuck with an untrustworthy speaker who was powerless to control his own caucus. Between two bad choices, I can see the argument for that I guess, but I still think the responsibility for what's going on is on Republicans. They enable and support extremism within their own party, and that led to this.

@erikalyn here's a link directly to the House clerk's office where you can see that no, the vote was not about McCarthy.

I can link to the rules of the House to explain farther, but that is harder to pull up because it comes down to pages in a really old book.

Yes, the story that went around was that this was about saving McCarthy, but that story was false. The question before the House was whether to declare the chair vacant and shut it down.

Republicans voted overwhelmingly against the nut jobs. Without Democrats' support the nut jobs would have been rightly just laughed right out of the room. It's only with Democratic cooperation that the nut jobs were allowed to stay.

Heck it's even possible that the nut jobs would have been expelled from Congress all together, but no, the Democratic support meant that instead of being kicked out they were instead effectively put in charge.

Thanks, Democrats.

https://clerk.house.gov/Votes/2023519?Page=2

@volkris Regardless of the wording, the vote determined whether McCarthy would stay on as speaker or not. The nut jobs were already calling the shots either way.

Republicans could end this any time by either voting for Jeffries or putting forth an actual moderate candidate who they could build a consensus around with Democrats.

Meanwhile, Jeffries has proposed an actual solution, a bipartisan coalition. Zero interest from Republicans, though. https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/10/06/hakeem-jeffries-bipartisan-coalition-house-gop/

@erikalyn no wording matters in legislative procedure.

After all, it's entirely possible that despite the vote McCarthy would continue. What the vote actually did was to shut the place down until he did. So emphatically, the entire point of the maneuver was to shut the House down.

As for voting for Jeffries, a lot of people don't realize that this isn't merely about an individual sitting in the chair. To change the party of the Speaker would likely involve major reshuffling of committee memberships throughout the whole chamber, and given that Democrats were willing to shut the thing down, I don't think they would be willing to negotiate favorable committee memberships, leaving that plan a non-starter.

I don't think Democrats are willing to form a consensus leadership with all that would be involved in it. Maybe I'll be proven wrong, but again, their voting record tells me otherwise.

As it stands the vast majority of Republicans are trying to exclude the nut jobs, but the entirety of the Democratic caucus is actively casting votes that make that impossible, so that's where we are now.

Republicans aren't going to vote for Jeffries because of the committee memberships on the line, and Democrats aren't going to step out of the way because they are getting political points out of it, no matter how destructive that is.