re: #247 Targetpractice

Way I figure it, there’s one of three possible scenarios for how today plays out.

The first scenario is pretty much the one with the lowest odds, that’s that Mitch gets Donny’s “deal” through a cloture vote and then passed on a party-line vote. If that happens, it goes back to the House where it’s DOA and we’re left with both houses of Congress holding a bill they refuse to vote upon. An equally unlikely scenario is all this happens, but Nancy allows the Senate bill a vote and it goes down in flames on a party-line vote.

The next scenario, which is more likely, is the Senate passes the Senate DNC’s “clean” CR, it gets a quick passage in the House, only for Donny to be a petulant child and veto it. As of now, I think that’s still a plausible scenario, but the events of the past 24 hours may mean that Donny has lost his stomach for this brinkmanship and will sign the bill just so he can get his ego-stroking session next week where he might think he can make a case for the wall funding at the next shutdown.

The last and most plausible scenario is the “clean” CR passes both houses with veto-proof majorities and Donny makes a show about considering vetoing it before signing it so that the gov’t reopens on Monday. The can gets kicked down the road, he gets to do his SOTU address where he’ll likely make a big spectacle about the “victims” of “open borders” in what he thinks will be a successful pitch to extract his ransom demand when the next shutdown happens, and the media does their annual “He’s so presidential for reading a speech!” mutual masturbation session.

Let me give you one more- the one I worry about the most:
Mitch Turtle puts up the Trump bill first, and it goes down in defeat. He then pulls the clean “CR” and claims that he will still only put a bill up that Trump will sign. He and other Republicans try and point at this vote to show Democrats are blocking the government from opening. I don’t think this works politically, but this is the Mitch.