Social media erupted in anger, frustration, blame, and mystification when it was reported that 11 Democrats failed to show up for a vote on Rep. Thomas Massie’s move to impeach Whisky Pete Hegseth, aka Kegsbreath (short for Keg-of-whisky-breath). So let’s take a calm look at what happened and what was likely happening in the background.
The vote concerned H.Res.1655 – Impeaching Peter Brian Hegseth, Secretary of Defense, for high crimes and misdemeanors. But it was not, as most of us thought, a vote to impeach Kegsbreath. Instead, it was a motion to refer. It appeared in the official Roll Call record like this:
Specifically, it was a motion to table the impeachment motion. I had to look this up because tabling a motion in Congress has an altogether different meaning to the same term in the parliamentary system.
So this was a motion to table the impeachment motion, effectively ensuring that impeachment of Kegsbreath would not take place at any time in the 119th Congress. The outcome of the vote was recorded in the official Roll Call:
When media reported the vote result, much hand-wringing and hair-pulling ensued on the left. They were reacting to the 11 Democrats in the Not Voting column. And there is a story there, but it was not what our hand-wringing/hair-pulling compatriots assumed. There’s another story here too.
We’ll begin with the other group in the Not Voting column. I was curious to see who they were and why they were not voting.
We can divide these 7 into 3 subgroups. First up is Julia Letlow (LA), who resigned from the House (effective at the end of her current term) to run for the Senate. She won her race, so presumably she was off enjoying the New Member Orientation in the upper chamber. Neal Dunn (FL) announced his retirement from the House on January 13 and has been mostly absent since June 11 due to ill health.
The second subgroup contains the losers: Monica de la Cruz (TX) and Derrick Van Orden (WI) lost their re-elections, and Tom Tiffany (WI) lost his bid for Governor. Evidently, these three were too sad to return to work.
In the third subgroup, both Rudy Yakym (IN) and Russell Fry (SC) won their re-election bids, and both were present the day before, so who knows where they ended up on Tuesday.
This list is interesting because Hakeem Jeffries and Nancy Pelosi would’ve known that at least 4 of these 7 would not be in the House chamber for this vote. But it would’ve been reasonable to assume Yakym, Fry and de la Cruz would’ve been there since all 3 clocked in the day before. The House vote for the Republicans could’ve been as high as 213 Yeas, with Tom Massie the only Nay. Had all 11 Democrats turned up to vote against the motion, the NAY vote would’ve won with 215.
This is where the story gets interesting. What if the Dems needed, reputationally, to record a unified Nay vote but, at the same time, let the Yea vote win? The only way to do it would be to ensure a certain number of Dems were not present for the vote. Pelosi was an expert tactician as Speaker, and Jeffries is a quick study. They’re also whip-smart, so they knew a ‘loss’ would better serve the Democratic agenda.
To achieve it, a minimum of 3 needed to be absent. However, by my calculation, they probably counted on 4, with the 4th person being the unfortunate Lou Corea, who was in surgery following a heart attack. But then 7 others accidentally didn’t make it to the vote either.
These 6 all expressed regret at having missed it: Brittany Peterson (CO), Melanie Stansbury (NM), Marilyn Strickland (WA), Steven Horsford (NV), Laura Gillen (NY), and Jonathan Jackson (IL). The 7th in this list is Haley Stevens, but no one cares where she was as long as she doesn’t get in anybody’s way.
The remaining 3 are all retiring at the end of this year after long and illustrious careers in the House: Nancy Pelosi (CA), Frederica Wilson (FL), and Julia Brownley (CA). None of these 3 would have missed an important vote – and that was the first indication that a plan was in progress.
So we come to the next part of the story: if this was a plan, what were Democrats achieving by ensuring the motion was tabled? After all, accountability is up there with affordability as equal #1 on their agenda for the 120th Congress. And no one doubts Hegseth has earned a place way up high on the accountability list. To quote Colbert and Duckworth, the “five-star douche” (Stephen Colbert) is “Unprepared, Unqualified, Unethical and most of all, he is Unfit.” (Senator Tammy Duckworth) So why not get an early start on his impeachment?
The answer lies both in what should happen before and after impeachment. In her November 13 Politics Chat (beginning at 46:45), Heather Cox Richardson noted the lack of impeachment hearings, which should happen before any impeachment vote.
There is a problem with impeaching someone without any hearings. And the problem with that is not that I would have been necessarily against it because he’s done so much damage, but in order to convince people that it is not political, that there is actually a reason that matters to the country, you’ve got to have hearings. And that there are some members of Congress who sound as if they were concerned that there were people there who thought there wouldn’t be any hearings, and then it would go to the Senate and the Senate would say, “It’s all political”, and let him off the hook. And then it would be very hard to revisit that in January.
As Heather notes, the case moves to the upper chamber for the Senate trial. But it doesn’t move out of the lower chamber; it moves from there in the form of a House team of prosecutors and managers who present the case for conviction to the Senate. Are you starting to see the problem? The Democrats did. Nancy Pelosi especially, because she’s been there, done that, twice.
You see, it’s the House Speaker that determines who will be the prosecution managers and lead the House team. And right now the Speaker is Mike Johnson. As Heather indicates, we can only rely on him to sabotage the impeachment. He’d ensure there were no hearings, and follow that up with decisions that would guarantee failure in the Senate trial. Can you imagine him choosing Gym Jordan to lead the House team with James Comer? Because that’s what he would’ve done.
Their opening statement in the Senate would’ve been something like this: “There were no hearings, so we have no evidence for you. The Democrats just forced this onto us because they are nasty, vindictive people.”
The whole ‘trial’ would’ve lasted less than 10 minutes before Thune took a vote and shooed them out of the chamber.
You don’t come back strong after a disaster like that. It would have become a joke and tainted every impeachment from then on. That’s why I believe 3 of the people who missed the vote were deliberately absent. They allowed Democrats to go on record in support of impeaching Hegseth – that was important because he is definitely on their target list in 2027, and it would’ve sent a negative message had they not supported it – while keeping impeachment out of the hands of the enemy, and Mike Johnson is the enemy.
Anyone with a working brain in the Republican camp would’ve been furious it failed to go their way. But they’ll be consoled if blue supporters blame Democrats for missing the vote. Don’t give them the satisfaction! Our team is not only a helluva lot smarter than theirs, but they’re also missing a big chunk of their former number thanks to the big beautiful bright blue wave!
I predict Democrats will win 261 House seats, and that’s exactly 60% of the US House. So buckle up, Zoomers, 2027 is just 47 days away!
THANK YOU, Michelle!
It’s just too bad so many of the left-leaning content creators (most of whom fancy themselves as “political expert pundits”) were too up in their feelings about the vote to bother actually doing any actual research.
I argued this in another article but focused more on the greater problem of “impeachment vs removal from office” because the last several high-profile impeachment cases did NOT result in removing the impeached person from office, thus being a grand waste of time. As horrible as Hegseth is, even after January 3, 2027, removing him via impeachment is likely to be little more than a castle in the air since that would require convincing nearly a dozen GOP Senators to determine Hegseth guilty of the charges. And the GOP Senators who’ll be in office after January 3 are not likely to be very amenable to “working with” Democrats (and, if the incoming Democratic leadership chooses to end the filibuster–not a good idea no matter who’s in charge because there’s no guarantee they’ll always be in charge–then good luck trying to get ANY GOP help in overriding any of Drumpf’s expected vetoes of Democratic bills).
Thank you, Joseph.
At least conducting a proper impeachment and Senate trial will help to bring some sense of accountability to those thirsting for it, and it will provide the incoming Democratic Executive with enough material to get an early start on criminal investigations into toe rags like Hegseth.
I stand corrected. Who knows when I will screw up next?
Did you screw up? I’ll go look. I’m sure it can be fixed by a clever addendum! Yep, just change the last paragraph to read something like:
Now I’ve given you the emotional rant of the populist left, go read the analysis of the realist left: [link to Those Missing Eleven Votes]. Michelle and I tag team here at Politizoom to bring you the full experience!
There! You’re all done!