lets say the Dems in the house don't go along with this plan and vote it down. What would happen?
Some might suggest this isn't even a possibility- that they have to vote for the agreement or otherwise we default. I'm not so sure.
We know the Republicans are going to be split on the vote. It is safe to say very few, if any, of the Tea Party affiliated crowd are going to vote for the agreement. That is close to 60 votes. Further, it is probably safe to say anywhere from another 25-50 Republicans will end up voting against it. So roughly half of the Democrats in the house will need to end up voting for the agreement for it to pass.
Because a lot of Republicans will be voting against the bill, the democrats would not take all the blame if the bill fails. This point is important, because to some extent the Republicans have (rightly) already taken more of a hit in the arena of public opinion than democrats, due to the fact that they have (rightly) been viewed as far more uncompromising than dems. Also, it of course is widely acknowledged that this agreement is heavily tilted in favor of Republicans, who basically got everything they asked for.
So there would likely be more sympathy for deems voting against this bill if it fails than for republicans. Given the hit republicans have already taken in this whole debate, and polls show they have taken a greater hit than democrats, I believe they would be under intense pressure to avoid default. Now don't get me wrong, I well know the hard core tea party crowd doesn't give a crap about us defaulting, but most of the rest of the Republican crowd does care about polls and their chances of reelection.
Would it be a very high stakes gambit? You betcha. But I'm just wondering if the Dems did shoot this down tomorrow or Tuesday whether "moderate" Republicans would
be put in a position where they felt they had no choice but to join with Democrats and to pass a clean bill raising the debt ceiling at the last minute.
Do Dems actually have the balls to take a shot at this? Almost certainly not.