On Thursday, Karoline Leavitt was asked whether the President's patience with John Thune was running out over the stalled SAVE America Act.
“His patience is running out,” she said. He wants as much of it passed as possible by the August recess. The House did its job. The Senate needs to do its job too.
Thune's answer came back the same day, and it was arithmetic.
“Maybe she or somebody else ought to get on the phone and get the votes. Right? It's 50 around here.”
He's correct, and the White House knows he's correct.
The number that ends the argument
The Senate has voted on the SAVE America Act, in whole or in part, at least five times. It has come up short every time.
John Kennedy of Louisiana — no one's idea of a squish — said it plainly: he's seen no indication Thune doesn't support the bill, and put it categorically that Thune does support it. The problem is members who don't. Kennedy said he's ready to vote again.
There is no procedural trick a majority leader can perform to convert a senator's no into a yes. The President has suggested killing the filibuster to get there. Thune and leadership won't, and it's worth remembering why: the last party to weaken it discovered what the other side did with the precedent.
Why I think this is a mistake on its own terms
I'm not going to pretend I find voter ID outrageous. Most Americans don't, most democracies use it, and the polling the White House cites is real.
But watch what's actually happening.
The administration has now spent months making a Republican majority leader the public face of failure for a bill Republican senators are blocking. That is a strategy for producing a weaker leader, not more votes. And Thursday's sniping is the third time this month the pressure went sideways — after the voter ID rider was bolted onto the stock trading bill, which Thomas Massie said on the record was designed to make Democrats vote no rather than to pass anything.
You can attach the SAVE Act to things. You can shout about it from a rally stage. You can send your press secretary after your own leader. None of those is a 51st vote.
The cost nobody's counting
Asked last month about a bipartisan housing bill aimed at prices, the President called it a yawn compared to the SAVE America Act.
Affordability is the top issue in poll after poll heading into November. Groceries, rent, electricity, insurance. That is what voters say is on their minds, unprompted, over and over.
The White House has chosen to spend its remaining pre-recess capital on a bill that has failed five times, while calling a housing bill boring.
Thune has spent months promoting economic work. He may be reading the electorate more accurately than the people criticizing him.
The plain version
If the votes existed, the bill would have passed on attempt two.
They don't. Yelling at the man who counts them changes nothing except how strong he looks in January.
Add your perspective
Right: Thune has tools he's declining to use, and a leader who can't deliver the President's signature bill has a problem regardless of the whip count. Left: the bill fails because it would disenfranchise eligible voters, and that's the actual reason it can't reach 51. Center if you think the fight is about the filibuster and always was.
