Time To Become Realistic, GOP: You STILL Don't Have The Votes... For ACB.

The Atlantic beat me to it: it has written, and published, a much-better version of a piece I was working on, in first draft this morning.

Since about Friday afternoon (which now feels like. . . a month ago, in political calculus time!), the entire landscape for the last thirty days of Trump's reign. . . experienced nothing less than. . . an 7.0 magnitude earthquake. Mid-last week, the GOP claimed it was cruising to an election day confirmation of ACB.

Even if we assume that no one else on the GOP side of the Senate falls ill to the COVID-19 super-spreader events of the last two weeks. . . it seems the Trump team is about two votes short. [I part company -- in small measure at least -- with The Atlantic, in as much as I expect Mitt Romney will vote thumbs down, if it comes down to his vote being the 51^st.]

He is likely to play the role of John McCain (as a pale understudy, in truth), in this King Lear drama, should it come to that. To be clear though, I no longer think she will get an up or down floor vote, before the election -- and with Trump now down around 14 per cent, to Biden, in the national polls, post the debate and diagnosis. . . she won't get one, after.

I'll go out on a limb, and say, despite Sen. McConnell's bluster -- am ready to call it. . . GAME OVER. It. Will. Not. Happen. Even if Trump is back at full-speed in four elapsed days (i.e., not likely). Here's The Atlantic's version of it:

. . . .Republicans [still] have a 53–47 majority in the Senate, but two of their members, Senators Susan Collins of Maine and Lisa Murkowski of Alaska, have said they oppose holding a vote to confirm a Supreme Court justice before the election. The Senate isn’t expected to hold a final vote until the end of the month, but were Lee, Tillis, and Johnson to be absent [Ed. Note: all three have tested positive, now], Republicans wouldn’t have a majority to approve her without the support of Collins and Murkowski. (All 47 Democrats are likely to vote no, in part out of anger that McConnell plans to jam a nominee through after he refused to hold a vote on President Barack Obama’s nomination of Judge Merrick Garland in 2016.)

It’s also possible that more Republican senators will come down with the virus in the next few days; multiple GOP lawmakers are now quarantining after having been exposed to their colleagues or others who are infected. . . .

One might be tempted to reprise Jim Carrey's Joe Biden of last night (on SNL, doing the debate send up): "imagine, for a moment, if science and. . . karma. . . came together, all at once. . . just imagine it!" Onward, into a glorious fall late afternoon in the. . . woods. Perfect.

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