Senate Democrats have spared the American public an "ugly battle" over the Iran which would "force" President Obama to make good on his veto threat, according to a breaking news email alert by CNN.
Here's the entirety of the email, with emphasis added to highlight the loaded language:
In a significant win for the White House, Senate Democrats have blocked a Republican resolution of disapproval of the Iran nuclear deal from going to a final vote. The vote on the procedural motion was 58-42; it needed 60 votes to pass.
This means President Barack Obama won't be forced to veto the legislation and drag out for several more weeks an ugly battle with the GOP-controlled Congress over the accord he has fought hard to secure.
The language of the breaking-news alert is cribbed straight from the first two paragraphs of this CNN.com article, which continues the bias in its subsequent content:
While Senate Republicans are considering a revote on the measure next week to put additional pressure on Democrats, and the House has also planned several votes against the deal, sufficient congressional support has been secured for its implementation.
The vote was a victory for the White House, after it heavily leaned on Democrats to back the deal. It is also an achievement for Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid and Sen. Dick Durbin, the No. 2 Democrat in charge of whipping votes, who worked for weeks to ensure wavering Democrats would back the deal and stick together on the important procedural vote.
Some Democrats struggled with whether to block the vote, especially after Republicans vigorously argued a pact of such historical magnitude deserved a final up-or-down vote.
In a sign of how important the procedural vote was to the White House, Obama called Reid late Wednesday to ensure Democrats would stay together on the vote, a Democratic aide told CNN.
"The idea they would filibuster a process they voted for unanimously just a few short months ago is going to be a hard thing to sell," said Sen. John Cornyn, the No. 2 Republican leader, who argued Democrats had voted earlier in the year to give Congress a say over the deal with Iran but now are blocking a final vote on it.
A top aide to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, however, signaled ahead of the vote that if Republicans failed on the Iran filibuster vote Thursday, the party might use procedural tools to force a revote next week. The thinking is that they might be able to put additional political pressure on members like Colorado Sen. Michael Bennet and other vulnerable Democrats up for re-election next year.
"They told us this was an issue too important for political games," McConnell said of Democrats on the Senate floor after the vote. "But that was last week, apparently."
Notice that it took until the ninth paragraph for CNN staffer Ted Barrett, Manu Raju, Deirdre Walsh, and Tom LoBianco -- yes, it took four of them to write this! -- to come around to the political controversy of the Democrats effectively running scared from a final floor vote on the Iran deal, something they enthusiastically and unanimously endorsed months earlier.
Highlighting this angle of the controversy higher up in the story, preferably in the portion which made the breaking-news alert, would have better served readers regardless of political affiliation or view of the Iran deal itself.
