"Look, we can defeat this nominee if we all vote against AND pick off Collins or Paul or Murkowsky. But we'd lose up to 3 Senate seats which means we are doomed when RBG or any of 'our' Justices dies or retires. The real political knife fight isn't over this guy, it's over the next nominee.
So, let's lose the battle to win the war. Manchin, you talk tough against me to win political re-election points. Donnelly and Heitkamp - you're free to vote "yea" to win re-election. I'll remain a looney on MSNBC and we'll send out word via Journolist and other back channels that they need to make it LOOK like we're against this guy, but not too much otherwise the Antifa wing of our Useful Idiot brigade will hurt us in November.
Yea, we will lose this confirmation (the guy may be a stealth Dem a-la Roberts anyway...thankfully he isn't a Gorsuch) but we will keep our 3 seats on the bubble. That means we keep it 51-49 so we can pummel the next nominee (even if we don't know who it is), stop MAGA legislation from 2019 into to 2020 so we can be strong in running Kamala Harris for President."
Please give us the source for the Schumer quote: I have never read that he’s said anything of the kind.