Here’s my best read of where things stand right now up in the Senate.
There does seem to have been some real movement overnight. A lot of senators held virtual town halls or other meetings where they interacted with voters last night. A number moved over into explicitly saying that they will vote against cloture. That’s a reminder to get straight on terminology.
There are two votes we’re talking about. There’s the vote on the bill — which is a straight majority vote and basically symbolic in these circumstances. Then there’s a vote on “cloture.” That’s a weird word. But that basically means the 60-vote threshold, the only vote Democrats can win since they’re in the minority. So the real issue here is the “cloture” vote. Forget that it’s a weird word and just focus on the fact that it is the real vote in this case.
Yesterday, a number of Senate Ds went from having no position to a “no” vote. Overnight or this morning a number have said explicitly they’re a “no” vote on cloture. But in a situation like this, you have to remember that the plan can be to allow most senators to say they’ll vote no on cloture with the understanding there’s enough “yes”s to allow it to pass. That was the plan as of yesterday afternoon. Or, rather, the plan was to trade the cloture vote for the right to offer amendments. But that’s really trading it for nothing. Since you’re trading your one point of leverage for the right to hold a vote you will certainly lose.
Things are so fluid right now that we can’t be certain there’s a “plan.” But you’ve got to assume there is. The key in a situation like this is getting individual senators on the record explicitly as “no”s on cloture. So for instance, say Senator Bennet is one of those secret “yes”s they’re going to fall back on. If you get Bennet and the seven others, whoever they are, on the record explicitly saying they’re a “no” on cloture … well, then they’re boxed in. Doesn’t matter what the plan was. Sure, someone can say they’re a “no” on cloture and just vote “yes” anyway. But once they’ve committed publicly, that’s really hard to do. So if you were someone trying to move the ball here, you want to assume there’s a plan to keep seven or eight senators in reserve as “yes”s but pile up enough explicit commitments that there just aren’t that many left when it comes time to vote.
So that’s where this is. I got a late start today. So I’m still trying to come up to speed on all the morning’s latest details. I think we’re going to start a fresh tally because, as I explained above, the situation is different enough now that the buckets of “no”s and “yes”s are quite different.
I will do my best to keep you up to date through the day. And we also have TPM’s Kate Riga and Emine Yücel running the TPM Live Blog on this topic here.
