Sure, I know, and dsws has already argued for it: the Dems should have supported McCarthy in return for concessions to their requests for a larger share of favors etc. from the Speaker in the House's business. That they didn't do this makes McCarthy's fall their fault.

Bull. McCarthy showed the Dems repeatedly this year that his word to them is worth nothing. They don't trust him as far as they can throw him, and that is his fault, not theirs. This fiasco is entirely a Republican Party problem, not at all a Democratic one.

The opening line should have been, "The Chaos Caucus of hardline rightwing Republicans won the day, with the help of Speaker McCarthy's own political incompetence over the past year."

Take a look around the world, folks! It's a chaotic US Congress in an even more chaotic world!

I say, let's have some fun! :-)

As Repugs demonstrate poor negotiating skills — starting with among themselves, and working with Dems is heresy I doubt that making a counteroffer of any kind would be welcomed let alone seriously considered. I’m confident the Dems at least tried.

Some Democrats should hold out, and demand a better deal than anything that's likely to be available. But for every value of N, at least when enough Republicans are intransigent enough to put the speakership into question at all, the Nth Democratic vote should be a better deal than the Nth Republican vote. (That's the Nth additional vote, after what's already in the bag for whoever the Republican leadership puts up for consideration. So the first hundred or so Republican votes just offset the fact that the speaker is going to be Republican, instead of counting toward deciding what N is.) This doesn't mean that the negotiation has to be done representative by representative. It could be the Democratic majority leader saying 'I think I can find you ten votes if you just agree to slightly better committee assignments than you would with no Democratic votes, twenty if you agree to such-and-such Democratic role in deciding which bills come to a vote, thirty if ...'.

Yes, but he lies sometimes.

McCarthy tells Republicans he will not be running for speaker again, according to lawmakers who attended the closed-door meeting underneath the Capitol.