A few days ago, defeated conservaDem, Claire McCaskill, was on Chris Hayes' show trying to wish upon a star that she could take back her vote confirming Alex Acosta after the Senate examined his qualifications. There isn't much new information that's come out since McCaskill and 5 other Democrats decided he should be the country's Secretary of Labor. It's just in the public eye now, enough for McCaskill to wish she hadn't been such a Trump kiss ass. Her Trump adhesion score was 45.8%, about double the average Senate Democrat. She voted to confirm Kirstjen Nielsen as Secretary of Homeland Security. Does she wish that had never happened too? She voted to roll-back parts of Dodd-Frank. Do we need an economic collapse before she appears on Hayes' show and commits seppuku? How many Yemeni children have to die before she regrets that she voted against opposing Saudi arm sales? She also voted to confirm Sonny Perdue as Secretary of Agriculture, Rick Perry as Secretary of Energy. Ryan Zinke as Secretary of the Interior, Wilbur Ross as Secretary of Commerce, Linda McMahon as Small Business Administrator, Elaine Chao as Secretary of Transportation, Mike Pompeo as Secretary of State, John Kelly as Secretary of Homeland Security... How many of those does she wish she could do over?When it came to Pompeo, you know who voted NO? Bernie, Elizabeth Warren, Michael Bennet, Cory Booker, Kirsten Gillibrand, Kamala Harris-- the presidential contenders. The only contender to vote with McCaskill was Amy Klobuchar, currently sitting at 1.2% national polling average-- and lower than that in all 4 of the newest polls.Yesterday, Reid Wilson, reporting for The Hill noted that the senators who have been most steadfastly rejecting Trumpanzee's catastrophic nominees are the ones who want to challenge him in 2020.
Trump's picks to fill positions in his administration and the judiciary illustrate an increasingly partisan divide in the Senate between Republicans who vote to confirm almost every nominee and Democrats who reject the vast majority.The average Democrat has voted to confirm just 38 percent of Trump's nominees... [T]he average GOP senator backed 99 percent of his picks, and the one who went rogue most often-- Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY)-- still voted to confirm 93 percent of his nominees....Warren and Gillibrand have voted in favor of just 11 percent of Trump's nominees over the last 2 ½ years. The two Democrats have voted to confirm only six of his judicial nominees-- all in the 115th Congress. This year, they have voted to confirm just three of Trump's nominees, including two members of the Export-Import Bank and a member of the Federal Highway Administration.Sanders has voted to confirm only 12 percent of Trump's nominees, but he has not voted to confirm a single Trump nominee this year. Sanders even opposed the three nominees Warren and Gillibrand voted to confirm.Sens. Kamala Harris (D-CA) and Cory Booker (D-NJ) have voted in favor of 17 percent and 15 percent of Trump's nominees, respectively. Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) has voted to confirm 38 percent of those nominees, putting her in line with the average Senate Democrat.But in what may be a sign of just how important opposing Trump is to the Democratic base, Klobuchar's voting record changed noticeably in the run-up to her decision to enter the presidential field. In the 115th Congress, she voted to confirm 84 of Trump's 180 nominees, or about 47 percent. In this Congress, she has voted to confirm fewer than one in 10 nominees."For people who seek the nomination, opposing Trump and in particular conservative judges will be a positive for party activists," said Sarah Binder, a political scientist at George Washington University and a senior fellow at the Brookings Institution.Sen. Michael Bennet (D-CO), another 2020 contender, has voted to confirm half of Trump's nominees, more than all but seven other members of the Democratic caucus.Those seven members who have voted to confirm more than half of Trump's nominees reflect the centrist flank, whose ranks were thinned in 2018 when former Senators Heidi Heitkamp (D-ND), Claire McCaskill (D-MO) and Joe Donnelly (D-IN) all lost their reelection bids.
Ironically, red state Democrats like McCaskill, Heitkamp and Donnelly were encouraged to take GOP-lite positions and vote across the aisle as often as possible because the self-loathing elderly Democratic leaders have long ago lost touch with the Democratic and don't understand that crap senators were defeated because they didn't convince any Republicans tp vote for them and instead discouraged Democratic turnout. These are the worst Trump adhesion scores among Democratic senators and former senators:
• Joe Manchin (WV)- 56.4%- REELECTED• Heidi Heitkamp (ND)- 54.8%- DEFEATED• Joe Donnelly (IN)- 54.2%- DEFEATED• Bill Nelson (FL)- 43.4%- DEFEATED• Claire McCaskill (MO)- 45.8- DEFEATED• John Tester (MT)- 31.7%- REELECTED
