The party needed all of its members in town for the vote in order for it to pass, but Sen. Sheldon Whitehouse (D-R.I.) was in South Korea for a conference, putting them a vote down. Leadership knew about his trip for weeks ahead of time.
“I don’t think anything went wrong. We just needed more votes,” Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) said. “We weren’t sure how the votes would come down, but we knew there would be absences.”
“It was a win-win either way. If we won the vote, it was a good win like we won the Canada vote,” Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) told reporters Thursday.
Bro it’s literally your job to know. What the fuck dude?
Isn’t that the purpose of the whip, to keep the party in line?
Yeah it’s literally his main job within the Senate.
Exactly this. They’re not a political party they are a corporate entity whose job is sitting in chairs to block actual political parties from having a chance