After Day 1
There is all sorts of talk about the “horse race”, how many votes it will take, mow many months it could go on, etc.. I think all of that is besuide the point. What is a lot more important is to to identify the plausible scenarios, and then to figire out how the Democrats might steer this in the best directions. I will list the various scenarios I have heard in n particular order.
McCarthy Applies greater pressure
McCarthy didn’t make any progress in the 3 votes today. He may be counting on the ~20 rebels to wear themselves out, but that could take weeks. That should be perfectly fine with every Democrat. We already knew that the odds of significant legislation happening in the next two years are very remote, so it is a perfectly good option to have the GOP clown show continue for a month or two.
I don’t think that is very likely. A similar scenario is that overnight, McCarthy appeals to the Fox people to start pressuring the holdouts to fall in line. Good luck with that. I can’t see pressure moving 16 votes any time soon.
Grand unification: McCarthy and Jordan
Nobody is talking about this, but I think it is becoming more likely. All the holdouts are willing to vote for Jordan. There might be a way for Jordan to take on a role effectively like “Co-Speaker”. Of course, Speaker is a Constitutional position, so this would have to be a working agreement. But there could be some sort of agreement that McCarthy won’t do anything without Jordan’s blessing. A deal like this could save face for everybody.
McCarthy and Jordan swap
Nobody is talking openly about this one either. McCarthy would hate this deal, but it might be the best he can get. nonetheless, it is hard to see how the guy with ~200 votes would turn it over to the guy with 20 votes.
An outsider
Earlier in the year, there was some talk of selecting Trump as Speaker, which is perfectly legal if you ignore the 14th Amendment. I can’t see anybody going for Trump at this stage, and I really can’t think of any other outsider these crazies would all get behind. I mean, the pillow guy?
Scalise
This might be more plausible. Instead of trying to decide between McCarthy and Jordan, maybe everybody would get behind the KKK guy, Steve Scalise. Could happen, but not for a week or two, and I don’t think this will run that long.
McCarthy makes deal with Dems
McCarthy is already threatening to do this. I don’t think he has any intention of doing this. The key thing is that Dems must be absolutely firm about their terms. They should insist on something akin to the Senate 50-50 rules, which would prevent Jordan from unilaterally doing subpoenas and such
Dems agree to vacate, lowering the threshold below 218
I have heard several talking heads say this and it is the most asinine thing I have heard in several years. Why would the Dems do this? They would only do that if they get rules they can live with. And in that case, why not simply vote for McCarthy, as long as the rules are locked in for the entire 2-year term?
“Moderate” Republicans make deal with Dems
Name one moderate Republican in the House. ‘nuff said? This one goes nowhere.
So where does that leave us? Basically where we started. The most likely scenario is that McCarthy will eventually make enough concessions to get 218 from his own caucus. I thought Republicans would recognize the stupidity of drawing this out to a protracted timeline. I was wrong about that. But in the end, I don’t think there are any scenarios that actually work other than McCarthy caving to any extent necessary. And that’s not a bad scenario for Dems. As others have mentioned, if the GOP holdouts force McCarthy to face a no-confidence vote if a single Rep calls for it — or even 5 reps, then Dems could threaten to do this any time they want to stop any GOP momentum.