All but 1 democrat voted no on fast track today. Call and thank them.

[happyslug]

5. Should we include Tom Carper? He voted not on orders from the rest of the Democrats.

Last edited Wed May 13, 2015, 09:27 AM - Edit history (2)

One of the rules of the Senate and House is that if you are on the losing side on a vote, you can NOT ask for a revote, but if you are on the winning side, you can ask for a revote. Thus in cases where you see one party votes YES way and the other party votes No, one member of the later party will switch his or her vote to Yes, so he or she preserved her right to get a revote.

Sometime you can get some members of the other side to change they vote, but they will not want to reveal that till the revote actually occurs. Thus to preserve the ability to get a revote, the losing side will have one of its members vote with the Majority. This is almost always the case when one Democrat or one Republican vote against the rest of his party.

Thus we should also thank Tom Carper for being willing to take the hit for voting in a way to preserve the ability of the Democratic Party to get a revote, if they can get some GOP members of the Senate to change their vote.

The actual vote was 52-45-3. If the three who did not vote would have voted with their party (and Carper had voted with the Democrats) it would have been 53 to 47, still a defeat, thus the fact that the senators who did not vote did not vote would have made no difference in this vote. Thus no one insisted that the three non voting Senators show up for the vote AND the Democratic Leadership picked Carper as the man to vote with the GOP, for his vote was also not needed to carry the vote.

After I wrote the above I saw that this was a vote on "Cloture Motion" i.e to end debate (i.e. to stop the Democratic Filibuster). To pass it needed 60 votes, it received only 52, including Carper's vote. If the three missing Senators had voted, it would have been 55, still not enough to end debate (i.e. end the Filibuster). Now, Carper may have voted with the GOP for technically they "won" the vote count, but lost the motion, but I am less sure of that today given this was a vote to end the Democratic filibuster NOT a vote on the actual bill.