WEDNESDAY: As the madness continues to swirl...

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 5, 2025

...we explain the need for five votes: Jobs in the Senate must be the greatest jobs in the world! 

We say that after watching the things people will do to avoid ever losing such jobs.

Three extremely shaky nominees—Kennedy, Gabbard and Patel—still await their confirmation votes in the Senate. By now, it seems fairly clear that Kennedy and Gabbard are going to make it through, with Patel's confirmation possibly still in doubt.

Or then again, possibly not!

Quickly, an aside:

With respect to this ongoing spectacle, whatever made Joni Ernst think she could oppose Nominee Hegseth without having the world of Red American opposition come crashing down on her head? It isn't the fact that she quickly surrendered in such an unmistakable way. It's the fact that she apparently didn't know what was coming when she attempted to take a stand!

These Senate jobs must be quite good, given the way a solon like Ernst will fold up in order to keep one. With that in mind, we now explain the alleged search for "the fourth vote."

The prevailing pundit theory goes like this:

In the current 53-47 Senate, the GOP can lose three (3) Republican votes and still get a nominee confirmed. This has led a string of pundits to say that the Democrats are out there looking for the decisive "fourth [NO] vote."

Does it actually work that way? Yesterday morning, we finally saw someone address the problem with that formulation, though even he made a mistake in his assessment.

We refer to Morning Joe's Jonathan Lemire. Yesterday morning, he described an obvious problem with being the fourth [NO] vote:

LEMIRE (2/4/25): Guys, I was on the Hill last Thursday during that day when they had hearings all happening at once for Kennedy and Patel and Tulsi Gabbard. And talking to congressional aides— 

The thing is, it's about the math. What's so hard for these Republican senators is being that one vote who can be blamed. It's hard to be that fourth vote—

MIKA: Yeah.

LEMIRE: —if you are assuming that Collins and Murkowski and McConnell, who showed a willingness to defy Trump, are going to be three.

According to Lemire, it's hard to be the fourth NO vote. He said the person who casts the fourth vote is the one person who will get blamed! 

At that point, Lemire noted that Senator Collins has already bailed in the case of Nominee Gabbard. He then continued with this:

LEMIRE: We know there are other senators who have real concerns about [Gabbard]. We're watching Todd Young from Indiana as well. 

But the issue is, it's just so hard to do it with four. And these aides were saying what they would really need would be a bunch of senators to come together to say no. So therefore, it could be five, six, seven or eight, and therefore that one person doesn't get all the blame, and potentially that Elon Musk-backed primary challenger.

There's a bit of truth to what Lemire said. There's also a basic fallacy there.

It's true! Under current circumstances, four NO votes would be much worse than three! In the case of Nominee Hegseth, three GOP solons voted NO—but Hegseth got through anyway.

That meant that none of the three could be assailed as the traitor who defeated Hegseth. But here's where Lemire's logic breaks down:

Uh-oh! If someone had cast a fourth NO vote, then all four senators could (and would) have been assailed as the decisive vote—as the vote which took Hegseth down. 

It wouldn't just be the poor shlub who happened to cast the last of those votes. It would have been each of the four, each of whom could have saved Pete simply by voting YES.

In the current situation, three NO votes is no huge deal; four is a disaster. So, of course, is five NO votes—but in that circumstance, no one could be assailed as the one decisive vote, as the solon who could have saved the day simply by voting YES.

In short:

In the current circumstance, there will never be four NO votes for one of these nominees. There could be three or there could be five, but there will never be four. 

In the Senate, Homey don't play it that way! In support of that theory, consider what happened when the fate of Nominee Hegseth hung in the balance on the night of Friday, January 24.

Good grief! Murkowski and Collins had already said that they would be voting NO. That meant there was room for one more NO, but two more would be a big problem.

And then, sure enough, how strange! 

By widespread agreement, no one know how Senator Tillis was going to vote. And as the world waited to see what Tillis would do, McConnell kept refusing to vote. 

The clerk kept calling his name as she took the roll; he kept failing to answer. Then Tillis announced online that he would be voting YES, and McConnell instantly told the clerk that his vote was a NO.

Just a guess! If Tillis had voted NO, McConnell would have voted YES. This would have saved the four dissenters—each of the four—from being trashed as the decisive vote who took the nominee down.

It wouldn't have been the fourth NO voter who got blamed. For the reasons we've laid out, it would have been all four.  

If you want to see this chronology as it played out in real time, you can watch Rachel Maddow doing the play-by-play that night. It was Friday night, January 24. You can start right here, at 9:15 p.m.

Could Nominee Patel be voted down? We don't think that will happen. But our prediction would be this:

With all these nominees, you may see three NO votes, or you may see five. But you won't see four NO votes. It simply isn't done!

We would have thought that everyone understood these facts of life concerning congressional voting behavior. That said, over the past few weeks, we've said a long string of pundits talking about the search for the fourth NO vote.

There will never be a fourth NO vote in the absence of a fifth! Can anybody here play this game? More and more, the answer seems to be no. 

Meanwhile, those Senate jobs must be wickedly great. Look what folks do to keep them!