But if he consistently votes with Rs, then there’s no meaningful majority to speak of. VP is president of the Senate and breaks ties, so including him as a D, Ds would need at least 52-48 in the Senate to do anything at all since the votes could only ever be as high as 51-49; if just one more defects on a vote, it’s 50-50 and Vance breaks the tie.
Unless committees or something like that are influenced by party control by name and not through real votes. That would be dumb as hell, so that’s probably how it works.
From a brief search of articles written on this subject, Fetterman votes with the party around 80% of the time. The 20% has had some real issues, but he isn’t consistently against the party.
Potential Senate majority. Him switching parties would be huge if it’s the difference between who controls the Senate.
But if he consistently votes with Rs, then there’s no meaningful majority to speak of. VP is president of the Senate and breaks ties, so including him as a D, Ds would need at least 52-48 in the Senate to do anything at all since the votes could only ever be as high as 51-49; if just one more defects on a vote, it’s 50-50 and Vance breaks the tie.
Unless committees or something like that are influenced by party control by name and not through real votes. That would be dumb as hell, so that’s probably how it works.
From a brief search of articles written on this subject, Fetterman votes with the party around 80% of the time. The 20% has had some real issues, but he isn’t consistently against the party.
“Controls”. You don’t control anything if someone wearing your team colors is scoring own goals on purpose.