“We need time to uncover the truth. Not that anything we uncover could possibly change my mind, of course.”
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My interpretation is he’s saying that on the Senate Floor, he’s a no vote and at least 1 other Repub is a no vote, unless the leadership commits to a 1 week investigation.
Flake wants to have his vote and eat it too.
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I think this is the right interpretation too.
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Unless ‘FBI’ is part of the investigation it’s 100% BS.
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Even if FBI is part of the investigation, it’s likely to be BS. Unless Judge is subject to cross-examination under sworn testimony.
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After his shameful and shamefaced performance in the elevator, I’m assuming it’s just an attempt to make himself look like a facsimile of a decent person while still ensuring he’ll have a gig in the wingnut welfare complex once he leaves the Senate.
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Well, that was literally what they were asking for. To as a committee to send a notice to the WH to ask the FBI to further investigate specific witnesses and questions (limited scope) and deliver it back to the committee.
There was no motion on the floor so Grassley used the time limit rule to call an end to today’s meeting. So it’s up in the air.
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If we’re going to be charitable. McConnel had already said he’d move it to a floor vote regardless of the vote in the commitee. Read that way this could be Flake forcing the delay the DNC couldn’t by walking out of the commitee or down voting.
Less charitably he’s covering his ass. He has enough doubts to be worried about fallout. But not enough to vote no without an easy excuse. So he’s engineering a face saving situation. The DNC get the investigation they called for. The additional delay is at most a few days. At the end of it he can vote to confirm, and say “well the investigation blah blah” if anyone calls him out on the vote. If anything pops up in the meantime he’ll get his ass covering thing to point to if he votes no. Weasely wheel spinning.
Though red state dems that had previously hedged are starting to announce themselves as “no” votes.
Maybe the hearing shook people more than it looked like it would.
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Thune still saying they don’t have the votes all whipped. If McConnell takes to the floor tomorrow, it means he either has all the votes he thinks he needs or he’s willing to let it go down in flames. Without a further investigation, neither Flake nor Murkowski would be able to save face voting yes tomorrow, as they’ve both called for one.
Flake’s got a history of creating these situations then caving at the last minute. This morning he announced he was a yes vote. And this “power move” was done without a bill, ammendment, or formal agreement. It was basically a “please do this” as he voted yes.
I have no clue why anyone believes Murkowski would vote against Kav. She’s a hard right partisan. And she’s been using the close split to elevate her self and make demands of her own party. Her healthcare vote was a safe one. Public support for that bill was pathetic, even the GOP didn’t support it, understand it, or know what they were voting for. Leadership were just forcing it through to say they passed something. There is absolutely nothing else in Murkowski’s record or positions that would indicate a disagreement with Kavanaugh.
Purportedly McConnel was against nominating Kavanaugh. And there have been rumors he’s been rushing the vote specifically in the hopes that it would fail. So they can move on rapidly before the midterms. But I find that pretty unlikely.
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Judge has apparently agreed to do that, so we’ll see.
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Nominative Determinism strikes again.
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Well, you’re in luck, it seems likely that Manchin will lose to his opponent Patrick Morrisey (who makes Manchin look like a DSA member by comparison).
Really? Because it looks like Manchin’s pretty favored to win according to FiveThirtyEight.
The most recent polling has them dead even. I expect that Manchin will therefore base his decision not on anything he actually believes, but on what he thinks will hurt him the most in the polls.
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I really have to wonder how many WVa voters actually give a rats ass about Supreme Court Justices. WVa coal barron donors on the other hand…
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Well check the Five Thirty Eight page. The “most recent polling” is a single poll from Monday/Tuesday (before the hearing). From a GOP partisan pollster. Nearly every other poll since polling started has had Manchin ahead by double digits or close to it. And 538’s prediction is still 7/8 for Manchin. There’s not exactly a falling trend there for the guy.
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The spectacle of these hearings called to mind an allegation of sexual assault from years ago, and its aftermath. One evening in February in 1999, a young woman was hired to perform exotic dancing at a fraternity party at the University of Florida. The next morning, she fled to a neighboring fraternity, calling the campus police to report that she had been raped. When the police came to investigate, they discovered that the evening’s proceedings had been documented in their entirety on videotape. Nearly every moment of the alleged sexual assault was captured on those tapes in excruciating and intimate detail. When the police saw the tapes, they declined to arrest the two young men who had been accused of sexual assault. Instead, they charged the woman with falsely reporting a crime.
Because these events transpired in Florida, where public records laws gave citizens an extraordinary degree of access to evidence in criminal proceedings, the videotapes of that evening became publicly available when the police brought their charges. With the young woman’s permission, a pair of budding filmmakers used the tape as the spine of a documentary called Raw Deal: A Question of Consent , interlacing the raw footage of how the evening progressed with interviews with several of the individuals involved, as well as experts on sexual assault.
…
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Fine by me. I’m not the person in this subthread who thinks it doesn’t matter if Manchin wins or loses. I think the D is important right now, bluedog or not.
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