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...very likely.
If the Dems could get 41 Senators to ABSTAIN or vote NO on cloture, they could create a working filibuster.
This can ONLY work to our advantage, because the GOPpies are on very thin ice right now. Given the number of GOPpie leaders who are under indictment, investigation, etc., and the extent to which the fecal end product currently intersecting with the blades of the rotary air movement device is likely to be flung, they are getting pretty thickly covered with brown stuff.
Although Americans' sense of smell is historically poor, and has been quite astoundingly dull in recent years, at some point it WILL penetrate the olfactory nerves. The more stuff the GOPpie leadership does that makes it obvious they are motivated entirely by power and money rather than by the good of the country, its people, and its Constitution, the faster those olfactory nerves are liable to respond to the plentiful stimulation they've been getting for the past few months.
Proposing "ethics reforms" that are transparently toothless, self-serving attempts to deflect criticism, stonewalling investigations, and now doing something as blatant as changing rules that have been part of the Senate's operating procedure for decades just to eke out a partisan victory...?
So the filibuster option (if they could make it work,) would play to Dem advantage EITHER WAY:
1. Dems filibuster Alito, Reps nuke the filibuster option, American voters kick their butts and we end up with a Dem Senate, which promptly restores the filibuster; OR
2. Dems filibuster Alito, somehow put together enough support to keep 60 cloture votes from materializing, and get away with it-- no Alito, Dems look tough.
The scenario that worries most Dem leaders, I would guess, is the "worst of both worlds" scenario, in which Dems filibuster, WITHOUT enough support to prevent cloture. GOPpies push a cloture vote, confirm Alito, and decline to invoke the nuke, leaving the filibuster as is. Which, clearly, is perfectly okay since it obviously can't stop them doing whateverthehell they want to do anyway. Leaving GOPpies looking both tough AND magnanimous, and Dems looking principled but weak.
Since we apparently have too many Amazing Spineless Senators to make the fili work, the leadership is wringing its hands in worry and declining to hold their tootsies to the coals, more's the pity.
disappointedly, Bright
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