Impeachment fail

And abandoning the border

Other than the time we fired the Speaker, this was the craziest week I’ve had in Congress.

Right now I’m sitting at my gate waiting to fly home, trying to figure out where to start.

Let’s start here:

So I’m on the House floor and we’re voting on a small bill, but we’re waiting for the big one.

The big one is impeachment. For the first time in 150 years, it looks like we’re getting ready to impeach a cabinet secretary.

But it’s not clear if the Speaker is going to call the vote. Two members of the majority party have said they’re opposed and another has been a little vague, so there might be three No votes in the majority. Assuming 100% attendance from the minority party - and with all of them voting against impeachment - three No votes from the majority would be enough to sink it.

BUT the minority party doesn’t have 100% attendance. One member is in the hospital.

So I’m watching the Speaker confer with his team and all the sudden he points his finger in the air and whips it in a circle - let’s do this - and they call the vote.

A big clock on the wall starts counting down. Five minutes to vote.

A moment later, a side door opens and Rep. Al Green - who had been in the hospital - gets wheeled onto the floor in a blazer, hospital clothes, and no shoes.

He casts his vote and ties it, 215 to 215.

A tied vote means a failed vote, so this sparks a huge commotion on the floor. Now the Speaker is scrambling.

His allies surround one of the No votes - the one who they thought might be a little squishy - and they’re really working on him. Voices are being raised, fingers are wagging. Cmon cmon cmon. And this gentleman just folds his arms and shakes his head. Nope nope.

The clock runs out, but the Speaker is at the podium and technically the vote stays open until he bangs the gavel. He’s watching his allies try to find one more vote… meanwhile the minority party is chanting, “Order! Order!”, which is what happens when the clock runs out and one party wants the Speaker to bang the gavel.

After a few minutes, the Speaker gives up - but not entirely. He knows he’s about to lose the vote, but he wants to be able to try again later.

To do that, technically you need one member who was on the winning side to offer a motion to vote again.

But since the vote failed, all of the Speaker’s folks were on the losing side. That meant the Speaker needed someone who voted for the impeachment to switch their vote so they could then request a re-vote.

So that’s what happens. A member who voted for impeachment walks up to the House clerk and formally changes his vote, giving the majority the option to request a re-vote at a later date. 

At this point it’s pretty wild on the floor, but to be honest, my first thought when I saw him switch his vote was, “He’s about to get pounded on social media.”

And he was. Holy smokes. Folks on social media who supported the impeachment had no idea he was just doing the Speaker a favor. They thought he was springing some secret trap and torpedoing the whole thing. 

They roasted him online. It was so brutal that he had to post a video explaining why he switched his vote, but even that didn’t work. Last I checked the guy was still being hammered because people think it’s some big conspiracy.

Just to be clear, the secretary could still be impeached. 

BUT - the special election to replace Santos is this Tuesday and if the minority party picks up the seat, it could affect the probability of impeachment. 

The Border Bill

So why was the Speaker so motivated to call the vote on impeachment this week?

Because he needed to counter-message the abandonment of the border bill.

Ok, but why was the border bill abandoned?

Because the Speaker decided that allowing some version of that bill to pass would be a political disaster for him, and that outweighed any potential improvement in policy.

First, he probably would have been fired. His right-flank would have gone ballistic and tried to end his speakership. Maybe the minority party would have stepped in to provide the votes to save him, but that’s a situation he’d rather avoid.

Second, addressing the border would remove the top source of outrage available to the majority party heading into this election.

In the midterms, the top two sources of outrage used by the majority party were inflation and the border. 

Inflation has come down enough that it’s no longer regularly in the national news, and that’s the key.

Campaigns don’t actually have enough money to generate whole new sources of national outrage. You need the national press to do that. Once that happens, campaigns spend money on a “message,” which is really just trying to pin the blame for the national outrage on the other side.

Right now, there’s only one source of outrage large enough for the majority party to base a national campaign on, and that’s the border.

That’s why they didn’t just criticize the border bill - they immediately chucked the whole thing overboard.

“But Jeff, the border bill had real problems.”

Ok, but that’s why we’ve got committees and subcommittees and members and staffers. The whole idea is to take stuff and rework it.

None of that was attempted. What we saw instead was the instant abandonment not just of the bill, but of the idea of even trying.

Only one reason for that: They knew they simply could not afford to give up their biggest source of outrage, even if its effectiveness is now weakened because of these fairly transparent tactics.

The Speaker is strategic enough not to say this stuff out loud, but some of his allies aren’t, and they’ve given the game away with some of their comments.

That said, despite everything, it will still work as a campaign issue. Not as much as it would have before this week, but enough to still be a top source of outrage for the election.

Campaign Update

Our primary election for Attorney General is about three weeks away. 

Last week, I asked you all to support our Win the Primary fund, and you rocked it. Thank you.

I got some requests to be more specific with how we’re going to spend the money we raise. Happy to.

Roughly 900,000 people in North Carolina are going to vote in our primary.

I can reach roughly 600,000 of them through digital ads that run on social media and a handful of other websites.

I’d like to reach each of them ten times.

That means we need to buy roughly 6m impressions.

Very roughly, 100 impressions costs one dollar.

Therefore, we need to raise $60k. I think that should do it.

Last week, we got about a third of the way there. I’m hoping you’ll help us close that gap by contributing here (with ActBlue) or here (with non-ActBlue).

Oh - and to answer a frequent question: We’re not spending any money on yard signs for the primary, but if you’d like to have one you can get them here.

Best,

Jeff

P.S. - In honor of such a lengthy email, I asked A.I. to create an image of “a man sitting on top of the longest email ever written as he watches the sun set, at peace with himself.”