This morning featured one of the #FiveWhiteGuys Rep. Seth Mouton (D-MA) talking about diversity in an insurgency supporting Marcia Fudge (D-OH) as House Speaker.
Fascinating is the framing of #FiveWhiteGuys as an anti-Freedom Caucus, and more foolhardy is Moulton claiming to CNN that his now 17 yet undisclosed floor votes will stop Pelosi.
The Democratic dissidents are so far nowhere near as well organized as the House Freedom Caucus, the roughly three dozen conservative hard-liners who frustrated the GOP leadership and blocked legislation, but they are threatening to use similar tactics.
Pelosi’s opponents are threatening to withhold their votes on the House floor even after an anticipated party vote nominating her as the next speaker. That is a page straight out of the Freedom Caucus playbook — used to deny Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (Calif.) the speakership in 2015.
Rep. Seth Moulton (D-Mass.), a leader of the anti-Pelosi faction, rejected the GOP comparisons. "The Freedom Caucus is trying to break government," he said. "We're just trying to get new leadership."
A critical test may come later this week as Democrats consider an internal rule change to raise the threshold vote for nominating a speaker candidate from a simple majority to 218 votes. The change is expected to fail, in a boost for Pelosi.
www.washingtonpost.com/...
DK’s David Nir calls it an “underpants gnome strategy”, but at the moment it may simply be a desperate tactic.
- Pelosi is guaranteed to pass her first hurdle: a vote of the Democratic caucus. In Dec. 2016, Pelosi turned back an insurrection by OH Rep. Tim Ryan, one of the #FiveWhiteGuys, winning 134-63. She'll win again this time—no one is even running against her
- These Pelosi enemies know this. It's why they're trying to change the rules for the caucus vote from requiring a majority to requiring 218 votes. That's been led by CO Rep. Ed Perlmutter, another of the #FiveWhiteGuys
- Pelosi supporters have pushed back sharply, and the proposal should be doomed for the same reason Pelosi will win the caucus vote: She has majority support
- Once Pelosi wins that vote, then it's on to the House floor once the new Congress is sworn in on Jan. 3. There, the rules are different. You need a majority, which is 218 if every member is present and actually votes for a candidate
- If anyone is absentee, or if any seat is vacant, that reduces the majority needed. Also, if someone votes "present," that has the same effect. Good background in this CRS report: fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R…
- In other words, Kevin McCarthy can't get elected speaker over Pelosi unless enough Democrats actually defected to vote for him (thus ending their political careers), or voted "present," or a combination thereof. This is exceedingly unlikely.
- But "present" votes by Democratic dissenters could actually help Pelosi: It would lower the threshold she needs while allowing them to say they didn't vote for Pelosi
- If the House winds up at 234D-201R (a likely scenario), Pelosi could therefore afford to have up to 32 Dems vote "present," and she'd still beat McCarthy 202-201. However, the rebels have been swearing they won't do this
- So the only choice for them, if they manage to stick together, is to vote for a third candidate on the House floor. That means, if there are 234 Dems and everyone shows up on Jan. 3, they'd only need 17 dissenters to hold fast
- The problem is—and this is where the Underpants Gnomes come in—they have no third option to vote for, by their own admission
- So they could all vote for someone who isn't actually running, like WI
- Rep. Ron Kind did in 2017 when he voted for TN
- But note that roll call vote: Only four Dems wound up not voting for Pelosi on the House floor, even though 63 voted against her in the caucus. Yes, there's more of a groundswell now, but not voting for Pelosi for speaker when Dems were in the minority was a freebie
- So the #FiveWhiteGuys are asking their band to stick together in the face of what will be intense pressure and to vote for the equivalent of Mickey Mouse. That might not be so easy.
- But let's say they pull it off. What happens then? There's another vote. And then another, until someone takes a majority. This has only happened once in the last century, in 1923, when it took nine ballots fas.org/sgp/crs/misc/R…
- Even then, Republican Frederick Gillett was still elected speaker after promising some procedural reforms. If they get this far, will the rebels make a show of force and then settle for some sort of compromise like this? Or will they push harder?
- If they continue to insist that someone other than Pelosi be speaker, they'll have to find someone—remember, they don't have an alternative candidate—willing to actually run for speaker They'd also need Pelosi to blink and tell her supporters to stand down.
- It could cause a prolonged mess, it will definitely yield #Democratsindisarray headlines, and it will cause a lot of bitterness if a tiny minority of the party stymies the will of the rest of us
- But as I say, the #FiveWhiteGuys and their cabal face some real obstacles to forcing a deadlock, and Pelosi is of course busy working to secure her own support. For the sake of the party and the country, let's hope she succeeds. /end
Charles Pierce tracks down why this tempest needs to get out of the tea pot.
The battle for the leadership of the incoming Democratic majority in the House of Representatives is already a mess. This is not necessarily a bad thing. Creative chaos, well-controlled, is good for a political party. It's where the new energy behind new ideas originates. This remains true as long as that creative chaos doesn't overwhelm the institution and, therefore, the majority's ability to get anything done.
Shoot enough sodium pentothal into Speaker Paul Ryan, the zombie-eyed granny starver from the state of Wisconsin, and he likely would tell you that he'd have been infinitely better off if every member of the Freedom Caucus had been dropped down a well. This analogy is being applied to the new, young, leftish members of the incoming majority. But they're not the real threat, as we shall see. The real threat was encapsulated on the electric Twitter machine with the hashtag, #FiveWhiteGuys.
[...]
Now, it seems, they've gotten the band back together again. The #FiveWhiteGuys are Moulton, Ryan, Ed Perlmutter of Colorado, Kurt Schrader of Oregon, and Bill Foster of Illinois. The driving forces remain Moulton and Ryan, with the latter the putative leader. After an election in which the Democratic Party continues to elect a demographically and politically diverse collection of new House members, Ryan is still insisting that the party needs to "reach out" to angry white men in places like Ohio when, in fact, if the midterms proved anything, it is that the Democratic Party's future is in places like Arizona and Nevada, and even Georgia and Florida, while, except for Sherrod Brown, god bless him, Ohio is a lost cause. It was an outlier even in its own geographic area. There were Democratic—and progressive—victories in Michigan, Wisconsin, Minnesota, and Illinois. Ohio and, yes, Iowa, were loss leaders.
This did not stop Moulton, who declines to challenge Pelosi himself, from spouting off in Roll Call that he and his group have the votes to block Pelosi's elevation to the speakership on the floor of the House—although, as has now become customary, Moulton declines to provide details on exactly how many members of the House have signed on here.
[...]
There is no need for any of this. Pelosi stays as speaker. Steny Hoyer goes, replaced by, say, Hakeem Jeffries of New York. Jim Clyburn does what he wants, and the new generation moves into position as deputy whips under him. Then the Democratic Party can get back to the primary business at hand: beating the Republicans sufficiently hard and sufficiently often until the Republican Party regains a semblance of sanity. It's a long, hard job.
www.esquire.com/...