Symbolic Voting

A whole lot of liberal Democrats, including Leader Nancy Pelosi, voted against the funding resolution. That's interesting. I wonder how many of them would've voted nay if they were the marginal tie-breaking vote. There are a lot of issues where I can easily say, "if I weren't the deciding vote I would vote this way," but if it came down to it and I actually was the tie-breaker in the legislature then I might have to sit down and think a little bit. I felt like we saw something of this same dynamic with Dennis Kucinich with the health-care reform bill: he said he would vote no, but then once it became clear that yeah, his vote might actually make the difference, he came around and voted yes. I think this is an interesting phenomenon, and I'm sort of curious how much this sort of thing goes on in Congressional voting patterns.