No Runny Eggs

The good news – cloture on the bill failed in the Senate 52-35.

The bad news – President Bush and the Congressional Democrats are still bound and determined to explicitly bail out the UAW this year.

The ugly news – Once the 111th Congress comes into session on January 6, 2009, the filibuster roadblock will be no more. Let’s review how the bipartisan Party-In-Government will pick up the necessary 8 votes (I will assume that the seat vacated by Barack Obama remains vacated, that Norm Coleman, who voted against this, is seated, and that Hillary Clinton, who voted for cloture, and Joe Biden, who was absent, either remain in the Senate for the first couple days of the 111th Congress or their appointed replacements are seated):

– Harry Reid (D-NV; “No”) – Voted “No” only to keep the possibility of bringing this back in this Congress. When he will be able to get to 60, that will become a “Yes” vote.
– Wayne Allard (R-CO; “No”) – He’s retiring, and the seat will be filled by Democrat Mark Udall
– Joe Biden (D-DE; “Not voting”) – This is a special case; I don’t know whether this seat will be officially vacant come January 6, but if it isn’t, it’s another vote for cloture.
– Ted Stevens (R-AK; “Not voting”) – He was defeated for re-election by Democrat Mark Begich.
– John Sununu (R-RI; “Not voting”) – He was defeated for re-election by Democrat Jeanne Shaheen.
– Gordon Smith (R-OR; “Not voting”) – He was defeated for re-election by Democrat Jeff Merkley.
– Ted Kennedy (D-MA; “Not voting”) – They’ll wheel him in if needed to become vote #60.
– John Kerry (D-MA; “Not voting”) – He’ll definitely show up to vote for the UAW and welfare.
– Ron Wyden (D-OR; “Not voting”) – He’ll be around for the UAW.

Revisions/extensions (8:16 am 12/12/2008) – And the truly-ugly news courtesy CommentGuy over on the linked Michelle Malkin thread: That vote was on the annual AMT “fix”, not the UAW bailout bill. I didn’t see anything that suggested that the UAW bailout bill got appended to the annual AMT fix.

We’re not done yet.