My vivid memory is of Democratic vote-counters telling me beforehand that McCain had everything riding on the vote - that’s when I went from thinking “tossup” to thinking “likely fail.” It was the morning of the vote. I also remember thinking if I said it on TV, NYSE could slidehttps://twitter.com/pkcapitol/status/1046130876336283649 …
Your view of it made sense. Nothing got voted down in the House for years; DeLay didn’t believe in losing, but he was gone. If you picked that vote as a starting point to tell the story of the Tea Party and the rise of Trump, you could do worse.