There are a few hundred seats in the galleries above the Senate chamber—allowing tourists and reporters to peer into the room as one views a diorama. On most days that the Senate is in session, the galleries and the chamber are largely empty. Today, they were full, and from the galleries the Senate took on the look of a schoolroom as senators filed in to seats at their desks while Mitch McConnell inveighed against the allegations levelled against Brett Kavanaugh. Lindsey Graham, John Barrasso, and Jon Kyl whispered to one another in their row. Dick Durbin and Dianne Feinstein struck up a conversation on the other side of the chamber. But a hush fell as the vote for cloture—to send Kavanaugh’s nomination to a final vote, scheduled for Saturday—began. Reporters peered over the balcony to catch first glimpses at an answer to what has become the central question of American representative democracy in 2018: whether Susan Collins, Jeff Flake, Joe Manchin, and Lisa Murkowski would stand to give “ayes” to putting Kavanaugh on the Supreme Court. In the cloture vote, Collins and Flake did without much ado, but when Murkowski’s turn came she stood solemnly and practically mouthed a no. Manchin, in the roll call ahead of Murkowski, came into the chamber late, casting his vote for cloture only after the fifty required ayes have already come in—one more twist in the latest chapter of what has become a long national ordeal.