Comments on: Harry Reid: A Man In Trouble

By: Owen

Owen — Mon, 13 Feb 2006 03:01:35 +0000

I don’t know about the Indian clients, but I thought Josh Marshall’s coverage of the Reid stuff was interesting. It’s worth noting that in the Marshall Islands stuff, Reid voted against the interests of Abramoff’s clients on the pertinent issues. I’m not saying he’s in the clear, but there has been a big flap from the Republican side of the aisle about not getting people for being merely guilty by association. (That’s not to say that some prominent Democrats haven’t been attempting to prosecute people based on association). Here’s the link to the appropriate article (with links to previous posts on the subject within):

http://www.talkingpointsmemo.com/archives/007660.php

My hope is that dealing with this will give overzealous Democrats pause so they’ll wind things down a bit and settle on the much more plausible plan of pursuing only those who have actually done something wrong, not just capitalizing on the fact that a lot of people had contact with a bad person. I think that, as with the idiotic impeachment mania, some Democrats are trying to win the whole fight in one fell swoop, instead of pursuing the more reasonable route of stern oversight, a reasonable route that they’ve left Specter to take up.

Sigh. I wish there were more good Democrats.

By: peter

peter — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 19:50:57 +0000

I would like to see Russ Feingold in that position. He’s ideologically consistent, more articulate, and more telegenic.

By: dmac

dmac — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 17:29:21 +0000

Please, anyone but Dickie for that job – we’re already sick of him here (in IL) – even Daley can’t stomach him anymore.

By: AcademicElephant

AcademicElephant — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 16:07:58 +0000

It’s food for thought.

By: Mark

Mark — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 15:29:04 +0000

Lord, I should hope not…

By: AcademicElephant

AcademicElephant — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 14:09:43 +0000

So Reid will go down in flames and everyone will respond with a collective yawn. Who will replace him as leader? Durbin?

By: Fred

Fred — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 06:11:59 +0000

So Harry Reid, the man who bragged only a few months ago to “killing the Patriot Act,” has now decided to back it after 3 minor changes. Except for strengthening the Democrats’ public preception as the party with linguine for a spine, what exactly did he accomplish?

By: Clint

Clint — Sun, 12 Feb 2006 01:12:42 +0000

dmac-

My suspicion (both when Senator Reid was chosen as Minority Leader and when Governer Kaine was chosen to deliver the SOTU response) is that the Democrats are so strongly divided that none of the strong Democratic politicians is willing either to step into the spotlight (and risk drawing fire, like Tom Daschle did) or to allow one of their ‘competitors’ to do so. Of course, I’ve always believed that the DLC branch of the party let Howard Dean take the DNC chair to take him out of the equation for ’08.

By: dmac

dmac — Sat, 11 Feb 2006 23:36:30 +0000

I’ve never understood why the Dems elected Reid as their leader in the first place. He’s a terrible speaker, and regardless of seniority, the party out of power should at least get someone to state their case demonstrably, without any signs of surrounding taint.

We could lump in Pelosi in that argument regarding a poor public personae, but why belabour the obvious?