- The arc of history is long, but it bends towards revenge.
Just over two years after candidate Donald Trump mocked John McCain's Vietnam War record, noting that he prefers heroes "who weren't captured", the Arizona senator stuck a dagger in President Trump's healthcare reform plans.
LoL.
Seems like a pretty fragile defeat. If Bob Menendez falls to conspiracy charges Chris Christy will appoint a solid yes vote. If McCain expires than Asa Hutchison will appoint a solid yes vote. John McCain is no mere mortal, he might hold on till 2018. Bob Menendez looks guilty as as can be but I'll bet he's got a fantastic legal team. Health care is one personal tragedy away from sweeping change.
My understanding was that this was a pure FUCK YOU. This was a 50 vote role call to move the bill to the house for a vote. Due to this being a reconciliation bill, all they needed was 50+1(Pence). Due to Senate rules, with the failure of this reconciliation vote, they have to start from scratch and have to go through the normal rules. McCain was on-board according to the article on The Hill or maybe Forbes(?) until he walked onto the floor and voted. Hate McCain, will probably hate him forever, but man this was a great move to fuck the process.
And more than that, this was part of budget reconciliation. And before they can actually do any budget reconciliation, they needed to get the fake budget reconciliation out of the way. And now the fake budget reconciliation is done, and they have to do real budget reconciliation, which means if they want to try this again, they have to do it the next time they have a budget to reconcile.
Can they get by on budget extensions and shut down until Menendez or McCain is out of the way? Can Trump apply enough pressure to Justice get a deal for Menendez that gets him out of office and keeps him out of jail in time to push another bill through. Would Menendez hold out until after a budget in loyalty to the party if it's a sweet enough deal (I doubt it). I don't know if Trump is sophisticated enough to get it done. He might be able to dig his grave screwing around with a Menendez deal, Jeff Sessions might not be in the mood for it. If they can get the vote before the budget I think Ryan and McConnell would be ready for another try.