True, they're all Dims. And they most always count up the votes and decide, when they are sure of enough votes, well, these Blue Dogs can vote against the bill, and these must vote for it. Then, when campaigning for re-election, Blue Dogs can claim to have voted against some number of bills that were unpopular in their districts, but that still passed.
And I do think the Republican who voted Yes is from a fairly heavily black district, and might have had permission to vote Yes if his vote would not matter, which if would not have.
It's just a game, so all Blue Dogs who can be defeated should be.
Everyone needs to remember that every last Blue Dog voted to make Pelosi Speaker and that is all we need to know — all of them need to be targets.
I agree with you that Cao was told to vote Yes after it was clear his vote wouldn’t make a difference. They took a page out of Pelosi’s playbook as she does that all the time to try and give the Dems cover.