The sun rose literally and metaphorically for House Republicans on Thursday when they finally mustered the votes to pass President Donald Trump's "One, Big, Beautiful Bill."
The vote came under the tightest of margins, with 215 Republicans voting for the bill. Two Republicans, Thomas Massie of Kentucky and Warren Davidson of Ohio, opposed it and Rep. Andy Harris of Maryland, the chairman of the House Freedom Caucus, voted "present." Two Republicans, Dave Schweikert of Arizona and Andrew Garbarino of New York, missed the vote as Garbarino fell asleep.
All 212 Democrats voted against the bill, meaning that the final vote tally was 215-214. But had Gerry Connolly, the Virginia Democratic representative, not died of esophageal cancer earlier this week, the bill would have been deadlocked and failed on the floor. Not only that, but Connolly is the third Democratic member of Congress to die this year.
It served as a bitter bookend to the week that began with former president Joe Biden announcing that he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer: Democratic leadership has an age problem and not only does it prevent them from winning re-election, it prevents them from stopping Republicans.
The week was always likely to be a painful reminder about Biden's age and the role it played in the 2024 election, given that Axios's Alex Thompson and CNN's Jake Tapper released their book Original Sin: President Biden's Decline, Its Cover-Up, and His Disastrous Choice to Run Again.
But Biden's cancer diagnosis put the former president's decision to run for re-election despite being 81 into even starker relief.
It showed his hubris in thinking that he could be up for a full-fledged White House campaign again when he even showed signs of aging in his 2020 presidential run that did not demand the rigor of a cross-country blitz due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
The Biden family and his defenders have taken to attacking Tapper and Thompson. But Biden's disastrous debate performance only cemented what people already felt: that Biden's age and frailty disqualified him from the most difficult job in the world.
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