I haven't thought a whole lot about who becomes Senate Democratic Leader and how the rest of the hierarchy shifts if Harry Reid loses to Sharron Angle. Do we have a heir apparent? Does Dick Durbin move up? Here's the leadership list.On balance, I'm happy with Harry Reid, mostly for the titanic achievement of passing health care reform. A lot of the things people blame him for are the result of (1) the Senate being a ridiculous body with ridiculous rules, and (2) members like Chris Dodd who want it to stay impossibly ridiculous. As far as I can tell, Reid was doing as much as he could to get progressive legislation through given these constraints. I hope he wins and we get to keep him.
6 comments:
Are there any Democratic Senators on the record for constitutional hardball?
I think we'd be better off with 51 Senators if it meant that a liberal could win the leadership contest and start clobbering the opposition.
I hope he wins too and I hope some of the GOP seats are won by dems and the net result is a gain for the Democrats.
Hasn't there long been talk that Durbin and Schumer will slug it out to replace Reid (whenever he leaves)?
Chris, there are quite a few people suggesting ways to get rid of the filibuster. I haven't heard anybody pushing immediate filibuster elimination, but Jeff Merkley and a bunch of others are cool with getting rid of it in a 6 year timeframe.
Charlene, that'd be awesome, though your hoping powers may be stronger than mine :)
That's the first I've heard of it, Scott, though I'm not well plugged into the 'talk' and it's a completely plausible scenario.
I have a hard time crediting Reid for health care reform when he allowed Max Baucus to waste months negotiating with hard line conservative Senators that any idiot knew were never going to vote for a health care reform bill.
i wouldn't pick reid as my ideal demo senate leader. that said, i think if he loses, we are going to realize quickly just what strengths he had
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