OPINION:
Harry Reid still has one good eye, and it’s enough to read the handwriting on the wall. Announcing that he won’t run for a sixth term, he said Friday that he wants to “go out at the top of my game.” That’s a face-saving way of saying he doesn’t want to go out feet first.
“I don’t want to be a 42-year-old trying to become a designated hitter.” So he will retire two years hence and be available for an occasional appearance on Antiques Road Show.
Mr. Reid, 75, is in no danger of becoming 42 again, designated hitter or not, and his prospects for re-election were not good. The buzz about who could replace him started at once. It always does. The long goodbye is not a capital tradition. Sen. Charles Schumer of New York says he already has the support of “so many of my colleagues” to succeed Mr. Reid. But nobody gives up power easily on Capitol Hill, and Mr. Reid, lame duck or not, says he will remain the Democratic leader until he leaves, quacking, in January 2017. Mr. Schumer, who has been around for a while, knows that 20 months is a millennium in politics.
The Democrats dream of returning to the majority then, and they will in fact have the advantage of numbers in next year’s congressional elections, defending fewer seats than the Republicans. But Mr. Reid, who escaped defeat in 2010 only because the Republicans put up a weak candidate, knows that Republican candidates are across the board much stronger now, as the elections last November demonstrated.
Harry Reid has been a leader of considerable skill, having held the diminished Democrats together against the resurgent Republicans, who under Mitch McConnell as the majority leader are just now getting steady on their feet. As minority leader, he kept President Obama’s amnesty for illegal immigrants intact, and held the line against Republican attempts to do something about the trafficking of women and girls. The price of protecting women and girls was accepting the part of the legislation restricting government-subsidized abortions, and the Democrats have declined to pay the price. Better to traffic women.
The tributes to Mr. Reid reeked of eulogy following his Friday announcement, as if he were already gone and half-forgotten. Some of the tributes sounded forced, as if the eulogists were merely being polite. Many senators, including some Democrats, have chafed at the way he was majority leader, protecting the Obama agenda at all costs. He prevented free and full debate, and the Senate has always taken pride in being called “the world’s oldest deliberative body.” He angered Republicans when he changed ancient Senate rules to enable Democrats to overcome filibusters, all to confirm Mr. Obama’s judicial nominees by a simple majority vote, rather than a larger majority to insure a judicious confirmation. He took a certain pride, too, in pushing through Obamacare with no Republican votes.
Mr. Reid evolved at home in Nevada as his constituency evolved, and he traded conviction for convenience. Mr. Reid, a devout Mormon, came to Washington firmly against abortion, and became its champion to satisfy the noisy feminists.
He evolved in other ways, too. He says many harsh things about the Citizens United decision, in which the Supreme Court declined to parse and wound the First Amendment. He decries the flood of “rich folks’ money” into politics that changed Congress, but acknowledges that he has had to use rich folks’ money to keep the Democrats “competitive.” But that’s different, of course. Ain’t it always?
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