AOC: Among the material devastation to everyday people, Senate Dems have now blown a hole in their ability to work with

[Cirsium]

58. Interesting

So those who voted against cloture were just casting performative votes, which meas that the headline is 100% accurate. Democrats in the Senate, as a group, failed to block the CR from going to the floor where it is certain to pass. Leadership knew (always knows) what the vote count will be ahead of time, and who ca be allowed to cast a performative vote. The CR is so unpopular with the rank and file - you can see that right here - that most of the Democratic Senators wanted to stop it or to look as though they wanted to stop it.

Because of the way this all came down, we can't know how many of those "no" votes were performative. Is there a serious defection from the leadership happening? Did most of the Democrats support cloture, but wanted to look good for their constituents and were allowed to vote "no" for the sake of appearance, knowing full well that leadership had rallied enough votes to move the Republican bill forward? When Schumer said that members were going to vote their own way, that was a tip of that he had the votes he needed and that at least some of those "no" votes would be performative.

The Senate Democrats - all of them - are responsible for what the leadership does and they should not hide behind performative votes. If most of the Senate Democrats are in fact at odds with the leader on such an important issue at such a critical time, then they must replace the leadership. If they do not, then we are forced to assume that their votes were mostly performative. Otherwise, what does leadership mean?