{"id":30756,"date":"2020-10-03T00:10:13","date_gmt":"2020-10-03T05:10:13","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/?p=30756"},"modified":"2020-10-03T00:10:13","modified_gmt":"2020-10-03T05:10:13","slug":"this-could-get-interesting-very-quickly","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/10\/03\/this-could-get-interesting-very-quickly\/","title":{"rendered":"This Could Get Interesting Very Quickly"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This caught my eye:<\/p>\n<blockquote class=\"twitter-tweet\" data-width=\"550\" data-dnt=\"true\">\n<p lang=\"en\" dir=\"ltr\">BREAKING \u2014 Sen Thom Tillis also tests positive for covid-19, his office says. Tillis is also a member of the Judiciary Committee, was at the White House SCOTUS event Saturday, met with Barrett on Wednesday. <a href=\"https:\/\/t.co\/FMGFWkOiFA\">pic.twitter.com\/FMGFWkOiFA<\/a><\/p>\n<p>&mdash; Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/seungminkim\/status\/1312184139827703808?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw\">October 3, 2020<\/a><\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><script async src=\"https:\/\/platform.twitter.com\/widgets.js\" charset=\"utf-8\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>Currently, the <strong>SCOTUS<\/strong> confirmation hearings have yet to start, and while Senator Tillis and Senator Lee (R-UT) have tested positive for <strong>Covid-19<\/strong>, the <em>Judiciary Committee<\/em> has a 12-10 Republican majority, so, assuming either Lee or Tillis is still functional at vote time, Barrett will make it out of the committee.<\/p>\n<p>But then comes the floor vote. Currently Republicans hold the Senate 53-47 (yes, two Independents caucus with the Democrats, but I don&#8217;t think that&#8217;ll be relevant). Suppose one of the Senators is hurting so badly he can&#8217;t vote.<\/p>\n<p>52-47.<\/p>\n<p>And, remember, Murkowski and Collins have committed to voting against the nominee, not because they don&#8217;t like the nominee, but because they believe rules made up by Republicans should apply to Republicans. While I&#8217;ve heard that Murkowski has wavered, there&#8217;s no definite retraction of promises.<\/p>\n<p>All of a sudden it&#8217;s 50-49 for the nominee.<\/p>\n<p>And if one Republican Senator switches sides, nominee Barrett&#8217;s dreams of being a Justice go down the tubes, and there&#8217;s literally no time to gin up another candidate.<\/p>\n<p><strong>But this gets even more interesting<\/strong>. Suppose confirmation has either failed or not been held yet on November 4<sup>th<\/sup>. Special elections result in the installation of the victories Senator immediately upon vote certification, and that can happen rapidly, according to what I read. There are two special elections this go around. The first is in Arizona, where Republican appointed incumbent and Trump-clinger Martha McSally, currently in Senator McCain (R-AZ) old seat, is polling poorly against first time politician and retired astronaut Mark Kelly. I would be surprised if Kelly is not Senator Kelly (D-AZ) in the near future.<\/p>\n<p>But the surprise could be in Georgia, the site of the other special election. Republican appointed incumbent Kelly Loeffler, involved in a jungle primary in which there&#8217;s a runoff if no one exceeds 50%, had been in a battle, a war, not with a Democrat, of which no one of note had shown up, but with fellow Republican, House member &amp; Trump ally Doug Collins.<\/p>\n<p>This had been going along quite sleepily until Pastor Raphael Warnock (D-GA) entered the race. At first, he had a solid third place, not good enough to make the runoff. And then, following some high profile endorsements, <a href=\"https:\/\/poll.qu.edu\/georgia\/release-detail?ReleaseID=3676\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">polls<\/a> showed Warnock suddenly <em>leading<\/em> the pack with numbers in the 30s &#8211; and some polls in the high 30s.<\/p>\n<p>High enough that if the voters preferring the other Democratic candidates, of which there are two or three, were to transfer their preference to Warnock, he might possibly scrape together a large enough victory to avoid the runoff.<\/p>\n<p>Suddenly, the Republican majority in the Senate is 51-49, and if Collins and Murkowski remain persistent in their insistence upon the importance of principle in the conduct of the Senate, Senator McConnell&#8217;s dreams of helping Trump to a third <strong>SCOTUS<\/strong> appointment would implode in a most shocking and dramatic fashion.<\/p>\n<p>Sure, a lot of unlikely things have to occur for McConnell&#8217;s final (I hope) fiasco to be blighted &#8211; but it&#8217;s not beyond the realm of possibility. The next few weeks should be <del>vertiginous<\/del> fascinating.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This caught my eye: BREAKING \u2014 Sen Thom Tillis also tests positive for covid-19, his office says. Tillis is also a member of the Judiciary Committee, was at the White House SCOTUS event Saturday, met with Barrett on Wednesday. pic.twitter.com\/FMGFWkOiFA &mdash; Seung Min Kim (@seungminkim) October 3, 2020 Currently, the \u2026 <a class=\"continue-reading-link\" href=\"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/2020\/10\/03\/this-could-get-interesting-very-quickly\/\"> Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr; <\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-30756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30756","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=30756"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30756\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":30757,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/30756\/revisions\/30757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=30756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=30756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/huewhite.com\/umb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=30756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}