Votes are still being counted to determine who is going to have the majority in the House of Representatives, with a clear path still open to Democrats. Meanwhile, wannabe-Speaker of the House Kevin McCarthy, who hasn’t even managed to win over his own people to secure his leadership spot, is trying to pretend like he’s in charge.
McCarthy, who is not leader of the House and right now doesn’t even look like the leader of his fractious conference, wrote a nasty letter to the House clerk, Capitol Police chief, architect of the Capitol, sergeant-at-arms, and other administrative officials demanding that they immediately start to work on his agenda—reopening the Capitol—and present him a plan for how they’ll have it done by Jan. 3, 2023. Never mind that there’s still a COVID-19 pandemic, and that they’re all going to be kind of busy getting the complex ready for an influx of new members and everything that comes with the opening of a new session.
And never mind that this is absolutely not true: “Earlier this week, our country voted for new leadership,” he wrote. Points for unmitigated, belligerent, and misguided hubris, I guess.
Meanwhile, the real Speaker of the House is back at work representing Congress at the COP27, the U.N. Climate Change Conference, in Sharm el-Sheikh, Egypt. She left her husband’s bedside to be there, the husband who was attacked—and severely—in an assassination attempt aimed at her.
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Pelosi’s spokesperson, Drew Hammill, minced few words in responding to McCarthy’s “desperate attempt to distract from the unmitigated disaster that was his party’s performance in the midterm election.”
“Now, after bungling the election, the Minority Leader would rather intimidate the professionals who run the House than get to work on the issues that voters just told us are on their minds,” Hamill wrote.
“A phased reopening has been necessary to limit the spread of a plague that has killed more than a million Americans, including two of the Minority Leader’s own Members—and after a deadly insurrection provoked by his personal hero and broadly supported by his conference. In sharp contrast, Leader McCarthy whipped his colleagues to vote against our House bill securing additional funding for Capitol Police, which has been crucial to the effort to reopen.”
“And in case he’s already forgotten, the Minority Leader is still the Minority Leader—and he shouldn’t count his chickens before they hatch.”
Nicely done, sir.
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Holy crap, what an amazing night! Where do we even begin this week's episode of The Downballot? Well, we know exactly where: abortion. Co-hosts David Nir and David Beard recap Tuesday's extraordinary results, starting with a clear-eyed examination of the issue that animated Democrats as never before—and that pundits got so badly wrong. They also discuss candidate quality (still really important!), Democratic meddling in GOP primaries (good for democracy, actually), and "soft" Biden disapprovers (lots of them voted for Democrats).
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