Harry Reid is Obsolete
Via Pach at FDL, citing politico (that’s a mouthful):
Asked if Tuesday’s election results give his party a mandate, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid just told Politico: “This is a mandate to get along, to get something done in a bipartisan way. This is not a mandate for a political party or an ideology.”
OK, this is about the last straw for me with the senator from Nevada. Reid needs to be replaced as majority leader: the past two years have demonstrated not only his ineffectiveness (how many blank checks, Mr. Reid?) but his frequent complicity with the administration’s worst excesses (no one has forgotten FISA or the way you screwed Dodd to bring that bill to the floor sir). And with a new progressive champion in the White House, who has openly advocated “spreading the wealth around” in direct contravention to the conservatives Reid is used to accommodating, there is no place for someone who wants to go along just to get along. That has led to historically negative approval ratings for the 2006-2008 Congress. Harry Reid systematically failed (or refused) to leverage the President’s unpopularity or the GOP’s unpopularity to accomplish important legislative tasks and to defend Americans’ rights.
Beyond Harry Reid’s political unfitness for the Majority Leader’s position under an Obama administration is the fact that he is unpopular at home:
Reid, who will turn 68 in December, has also seen his personal approval ratings slump in Nevada, according to a recent poll by the Las Vegas Review-Journal.
Only 32 percent of Nevadans now approve of the job he’s doing, and 51 percent disapprove. This is a stark reversal from the previous poll in May, when 46 percent approved of Reid and 42 disapproved.
In Washington, Reid has seemed to relish the national profile that has come with the majority leader’s job — and the platform it has given him to express his obviously sincere disdain for President Bush, Rush Limbaugh and all manner of other conservative villains.
But this promotion has forced him to dilute the political recipe which proved effective in Nevada. Reid managed to win as a Democrat in a state that has voted Republican at the presidential level in 10 of the past 15 elections. in part by stressing his own conservative views on cultural issues like abortion rights.
These numbers are probably a little old, and it’s dumb to try to make predictions based on them (especially when you have no skill for that). But who needs a majority leader whose political future is in question? We need new blood: Harry Reid must go.
