Dem Rep. Casten: Dems Who Voted to Rebuke Harris on Border Were Trying to Save Their Seats, Didn’t Really Mean It

On Thursday’s broadcast of Bloomberg’s “Balance of Power,” Rep. Sean Casten (D-IL) stated that the Democrats who voted to condemn 2024 Democratic presidential candidate Vice President Kamala Harris over her handling of the border were thinking, “this helps me hold my seat and it doesn’t really matter” because it’s not binding and won’t be taken up by the Senate.

Casten stated, “[T]hese are some members who are in some very vulnerable districts who are thinking a lot about their own re-election. And I think if you ask any of them individually, what they will all tell you is that that bill is never going to be taken up by the Senate, it is completely nonbinding. And their judgment, I think, I’m not — I don’t want to tell them — tell you how they’re thinking, but I think their judgment was that this helps me hold my seat and it doesn’t really matter. I think the sadder one, for folks like me, is that, that’s not what we should have been voting on this week. That wasn’t something any of the Republicans were talking about until they realized that they had a formidable candidate for president and they couldn’t pass a funding bill, so maybe we’ll just do something that says, Kamala Harris, me not happy. Okay, fine, but it’s a substanceless bill. And we’ll move on now to get to the real work.”

Follow Ian Hanchett on Twitter @IanHanchett