The brilliant move that Nancy Pelosi just pulled off against Donald Trump and the Republicans

| 11:50 pm EST February 25, 2019
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Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi just keeps racking up wins over Donald Trump, partly because she expertly knows how things work, and Trump largely doesn’t. Take for instance the procedural maneuver that Pelosi just pulled off which, regardless of how the vote goes, will end up helping the Democrats and harming Trump and the Republicans.

Nancy Pelosi and her allies like Joaquin Castro introduced what’s called a “privileged resolution” to bring an end to Donald Trump’s national emergency declaration. This means that not only will it be voted on in the House (where it’ll pass), it will also have to be voted on in the Senate; Mitch McConnell can’t block it. It also only needs a simple majority to pass, thus sidestepping the sixty vote supermajority that sometimes derails Senate votes.

This means that just four Republican Senators have to vote for this resolution, and it’ll pass the Senate. There’s buzz right now that there may indeed be four or more such votes. We’ll see if that happens, or if the GOP ends up being as big a bunch of cowards as ever. But that’s not what matters here.

Even if this resolution passes the House and Senate, it’ll still be vetoed by Trump, and there won’t be enough votes to override the veto. However, passing this resolution isn’t the point. Trump’s national emergency will be blocked by the courts anyway. The point here is to force the vote to happen.

Every single Republican in the House and Senate will have to vote for or against Donald Trump’s national emergency. This will hurt Trump because at least some Republicans will vote against him on this, which will weaken him and begin to isolate him from his own party.

This will also hurt several Republicans in the House and Senate. When casting their vote for or against Trump’s national emergency, they’re having to guess right now how their constituents back home will view Trump by 2020, and they’re having to commit themselves to it with this vote. Some of these Republicans will guess wrong, and when they seek reelection in 2020, the Democrats will be able to use their vote against them.