DISCLOSE Vote Pulled

The bill is obviously not dead, but it’s in seriously jeopardy at this time:

Democratic leadership aides said the vote would be rescheduled until next week, but it is still unclear whether Pelosi and Rep. Chris Van Hollen (Md.), chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee and the author of the bill, will have enough votes to move forward then.

I would say Countertop is now very close to being right. The Blue Dogs and Congressional Black Caucus were no votes, the Blue Dogs because of business interests lining up against DISCLOSE, and the CBC because of the NRA exemption.

I don’t think NRA’s plan was to derail this bill all along by seeking to be exempt. The reaction of other groups isn’t something they could have anticipated. But it’s worth noting that if NRA had sat idly by, this would have passed, because no one was paying attention to it, or understood how bad it was. It was NRA’s threatened opposition to the bill that made Pelosi carve out an exemption, so she could keep her Blue Dogs on board. It’s also worth noting if NRA had just opposed DISCLOSE, we also would have likely been saddled with it, because the CBC would have been on board. As Politico says, “Pelosi and Van Hollen could not afford to lose large numbers of votes from the Blue Dogs and the CBC.” She probably could have lost most of the Blue Dogs and still passed this. But not the Blue Dogs and CBC, with CBC representing 43 members.

Pelosi didn’t pull it out of the kindness of her heart. She pulled it because she does not have the votes to pass it. It’s hard to see how she’s going to get those votes without carving a wider exemption, which will cost her votes among those pushing Campaign Finance. It’s hard to see how Pelosi is going to put this one back together at this point, but I wouldn’t count her out. Health Care seemed dead more than a few times. The question will be will Pelosi want to spend the political capitol shoving this bill down our throats like she did with HCR? We’ll see.