Ten? Really?

I can't wait to see who they are. Almost assuredly the bluest of the Blue Dogs, taking freebie procedural votes against the leadership.

Ordering the previous question is akin to a House version of cloture, except that instead of unlimited debate, there's only an extra hour at stake. Well, that and the ability to amend the rule, which would be an exceptionally dangerous surrender of the power the majority gives itself on the Rules Committee.

Essentially, ordering the previous question asks, "Will the House now end debate on that thing we were just debating -- hence "previous question" -- and move next to a vote on that thing we were just debating?" Defeat the previous question, and the House moves into default procedural mode, in which everything gets an hour of debate. The rule for the health insurance reform bill is the pending question, so that would stay on the floor unless it was pulled by the leadership (which is the most likely outcome of a defeat on the previous question), and the next hour would be devoted to the debate of proposed amendments to the rule. That would pretty much defeat the entire purpose of having developed the rule in the Rules Committee in the first place. So you don't want that.

Now, on the one hand, these Dems likely only voted against the previous question because it made no difference, with 240+ votes for it already racked up. On the other hand, a vote against the previous question is a vote that says, "I do not want the Democratic majority to control the agenda and the voting procedure in the House of Representatives today."

Ten Democrats said that today, which is bad enough. But to top it all off, they only said it because they want to be able to tell their constituents that they "stood up to the leadership" on that vote -- even though the bottom line was that it didn't make a damn bit of difference where they stood. So, doubly craven.

Why are they allowed to do this, then? Because it supposedly helps these Democrats retain their seats in Congress, when they come from conservative districts.

And why do we need to retain those seats? Well, so that they can come back to Congress and vote with the Republicans, of course.

Make sense? No? Well, shut up, hippie.