tl;dr: Shit's going down publicly that makes me think public opinion doesn't matter anymore, and cryptographic voting methods exist to test if the dems in the House are serious or not.

More and more these days I see shit that I'm certain wouldn't have played out publicly 20 years ago; internal infighting and an outward united face has always been (and will always be) the way groups of people organize. Cutting a backroom deal with an opposing group to get something you want/need is always what it's been about, and scoring a deal that forces someone on the opposing to vote against the will of the people that elected them is part of it: "nevermind that people's lives are at stake, I got X person to vote against Y people!"

The between politics and professional wrestling only get easier to make. One side, with their organization top heavy with dominionists and their project 2025 playbook are out in public telling the crowd, "We're going to cut the US federal government up into tiny pieces, make it unusable, make people's lives miserable, and bring about the book of revelations so jesus can come back." The crowd laughs and cheers because they sure are sticking it to the other guy. Only when gas gets expensive do people start to react, but by that time it's too late. The plans are in place, you knew about them ahead of time, agreed to them by voting for it, and if you get pissy and loud about how it affects you, well you just won't get election funding for the next turn.

The democrats seem hell-bent on maintaining that politics (the wrestling matches) don't have the outcome decided ahead of time, but enough people have enough access to better news sources to know what's going on. Everyone caught on to when that jobber from Maine was going to vote against the repubs, and those predictions about which way she'd vote held up. Then, from under the ring, Thomas Massie with the articles of Impeachment! It's a slam dunk! Oh my god, the dems are shaking hands with the bad guys (eleven democrats didn't show up for the vote)! The explanation (they were busy) might play out in kayfabe, but in the real world that's MORE of the gapping of our expertise in admirals and generals and more of a pivot away from our edge in soft power in favor of an edge in willingness to charge machinegun nests. This was a big concern a month ago, and Massie was convinced he had the votes. Why?

It feels like something went off script in the ring, and the dems in the House are using weaksauce lies to justify it because that's what they think will work. The Senate may take the chance to oust Schumer (a good move IMHO even if only in the sense that it passes the torch to the next generation), but the House is trying to be business as usual? They're doing the thing that people elected the democrats to STOP doing? It doesn't make sense in-ring because it's not going to be a good storyline, and it doesn't make sense in the real world either unless all the allegations about corruption, lobbying, and bribery are completely true.

Whatever. Maybe we're all just smarks who've gone off script (our job is to believe the script), but if politicians are truly serious about citing a Serious Issue about why they need campaign donations, then they can be serious enough to do a cryptographically verifiable public/secret vote.