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Hakeem Jeffries, Dems Who Missed Hegseth Vote Blamed by Left (www.mediaite.com)
submitted 20 hours ago by to c/politics@lemmy.world
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[–] [S] 9 points 19 hours ago (4 children)

And the leader of the Democrats in the 119th Congress is bidding for leadership of the 120th Congress. The point of impeachment being a long shot isn't the issue here, the fact that Massie introduced it isn't the issue here, the fact that it was a quick turn around for this vote to advance it isn't the issue here.

The issue is the complete failure of the 119th Congress' Democratic leadership when your job is to ensure that on important votes, you make sure that your members are there to vote for it. When you ensure everyone can make time to advance a shitty bill that neuters the Clean Water act then you can damn well ensure that on the vote to advance impeachment of a guy who you've constantly said was unfit for the job, you make damn well sure that everyone is there to vote and not pussyfooting around getting stuck in traffic. And that same failure of a leader is running for the leadership of the 120th Congress too so no, we are right to be up in arms about this because if you can't be arsed to do you damn job now, you aren't going to be arsed to do the job latter when it actually matters.

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  • [–] 3 points 19 hours ago (3 children)

    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.

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  • [–] [S] 3 points 19 hours ago* (1 child)

    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.

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  • [–] 1 point 10 hours ago*

    But in the end it was functionally irrelevant to the vote.

    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.

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