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Yeah, impeachment failed in part because Hakeem Jeffries couldn't even be bothered to whip the vote.
For those who don't know what that means, to whip the vote is to go around all your party members, make sure you know how they're going to vote, nudge any stragglers into line if you can, and make sure they all know when the vote is scheduled so they can actually be there.
That's where the name "whip" comes from: the party whip literally goes around and does whatever they have to do to get the vote of their party's members on a specific bill, almost as if with a physical whip, like corralling horses or herding cattle to get them where they need to be and vote.
To do this is one of Jeffries' main responsibilities as current minority leader, it's done on every important bill, and he doesn't even have to do the leg work himself: he has actual appointed whips that do it for him. If you're a Speaker and you don't care about this bill, or worse, you actively want this bill to fail because you could not prevent it from coming to a vote, you don't bother to whip. It's kind of a soft sabotage.
And Jeffries couldn't be bothered to whip the vote to impeach Hegseth on actual war crimes. He told the House Dems, "Vote your conscience," and then just dropped it. All the Dems who did vote got themselves there because they cared about it enough to do so. There is at least one who was not present because of illness, and I understand another tried but didn't make it because of an unforeseen traffic problem: the vote closed before they could get there. But the rest? Hell, it wasn't even important enough for Jeffries to whip, why would they bother?
This apathetic turnout vote is another perfect demonstration of WHY HAKEEM JEFFRIES NEEDS TO GO.
