Here is our final whip count. For those who have been following, Barney Frank called me on Thursday June 4, after the Republicans said they would vote en masse against the supplemental. Barney told me about the Graham-Lieberman photo suppression amendment, which really wasn’t on anyone’s radar yet. Our first committed vote was Eric Massa, 11 days ago on June 5. He stayed true to his word despite the fact that Jim Jones and others were personally putting tremendous pressure on him.

By Monday the 8th, we had 12, but we lost 6 (as we knew we would) when the Lieberman photos came out of the bill. By June 12, we had 22. On June 13, we got hold of an internal Hill list that had the commitments that members had made to each other which gave us 32 — as you can see, 6 of the 10 defections came from from that list, so they were turning their backs on their colleagues to vote "yea."

By June 15, we had 36 of the 39 votes we needed. In the end we took 32, picking up 7 that people worked really tenaciously for days on delivering. Rahm and the entire White House staff would have been *ecstatic* at those 7 votes.

  1. Tammy Baldwin — Citizen Whip on June 9.
  2. Michael Capuano — June 12.
  3. Yvette Clarke YEA — Citizen Whip on June 9, also on internal Hill list.
  4. John Conyers — June 9.
  5. Jerry Costello YEA — internal Hill list.
  6. Peter DeFazio YEA – Citizen Whip, June 11.
  7. Lloyd Doggett — Committed on June 11.
  8. Donna Edwards — internal Hill list.
  9. Keith Ellison — Citizen Whip "no," then Citizen Whip "yes." Whips kept calling.
  10. Sam Farr — committed on June 9, went wobbly at the last minute, but came back after an all-out push.
  11. Bob Filner — Citizen whip on June 5, internal Hill list.
  12. Raul Grijalva — committed on June 9, also went wobbly there but came back.
  13. Alan Grayson– June 7.
  14. Luis Gutierrez YEA — internal Hill list.
  15. Jay Inslee YEA — Citizen Whip June 11.
  16. Steve Kagen YEA — internal Hill list.
  17. Marcy Kaptur — CQ Politics June 11.
  18. Dennis Kucinich – June 11.
  19. Barbara Lee — Citizen Whip on June 5.
  20. John Lewis NV –Citizen Whip.
  21. Eric Massa — June 5.
  22. James McGovern — committed on June 9, caught #rahmflu at the last minute, but recovered.
  23. Michael Michaud — Turn Maine Blue.
  24. Richard Neal YEA — Citizen Whip.
  25. Jim Oberstar YEA — internal Hill list.
  26. Chellie Pingree — Turn Maine Blue.
  27. Jose Serrano — internal Hill list.
  28. Carol Shea-Porter — internal Hill list.
  29. Brad Sherman — June 12.
  30. Jackie Speier — Citizen Whip, June 15.
  31. Pete Stark — Citizen Whip, June 11.
  32. Niki Tsongas — internal Hill list.
  33. Nydia Velasquez YEA — internal Hill list.
  34. Maxine Waters — June 8.
  35. Diane Watson — Citizen Whip on June 9.
  36. Lynn Woolsey — Citizen Whip on June 9.

Pickups:

  1. Mike Honda — Targeted on June 15.
  2. Zoe Lofgren — Targeted on June 16.
  3. Donald Payne — Targeted on June 16.
  4. Jared Polis — Targeted on June 15.
  5. John Tierney — Targeted on June 15.
  6. Peter Welch — Was pretty much a certain "yes," but then Green Mountain Daily got into the act. Go Odum.

I’ll have a lot more to say later, and a ton of people to thank–since some didn’t want to be acknowledged at the time I need to back and write up a comprehensive list. But I’m pretty sure it started with Bob Fertik emailing me and David Swanson that he was twittering progressive caucus members, and it quickly took on a life of its own.

But every single person who worked on this was inspirational, especially the people who made the Citizen Whip Count work (I think there were 1,200 or so of you). As I’m going over all the old posts, I am just incredibly excited and energized by what happened. We all knew we were going to "lose" eventually, but "winning" was never the goal.

Just remember:

They had to hold it open 10 extra minutes and after the Dems hit 218 and there were five GOP votes that scurried in under the wire.

We made the President of the United States himself whip to get the votes.

We tried to make the Dems fight like this when Bush was in office to stop funding the war, but they wouldn’t–so we did it ourselves.

I’m very proud to have worked with every single one of you. This was going to be a rout. They had to work for it.

Let’s do it again.