Yes, I'm talking about Harry Reid though I suppose I could be talking about any number of conservaDems that Rahm Emanuel has rammed down the party's throat with epic results. The proximate cause of my talking about Reid is an Adam Nagourney article on him in today's NYT that tries to make him look smart, prescient, and prudent but unfortunately only succeeds in outing his excessive caution, cowardice, and cluelessness, not to mention that he seems firmly stuck in 2004 at the height of the Bush Era and hasn't yet come to terms with the fact that, you know, Time Marches On. And that it, in fact, has.
Bush is GONE, babe. How many times we gotta tell yah?
Item: Harry is terrified that he's facing an uphill battle in his re-election fight. Nagourney, bless his neoconservative soul, does his best to make it sound like Harry is Up Against It For Real.
Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, has emerged as a tempting target for Republicans as he prepares for re-election next year: unpopular at home, identified with partisan battles in Washington and shadowed by the memory of the election defeat suffered by the last Democrat who held his job, Tom Daschle of South Dakota.
“We view this race as highly competitive, if not the most highly competitive race for a seat held by a Democratic incumbent today,” said Randy Bumps, political director of the National Republican Senatorial Committee.
But "Daschle's defeat" was 5 years ago. Since then the far-right GOP has done everything in its power to stop sober, responsible people from thinking of them as anything other than a bunch of useless and probably stone crazy whack jobs specializing in obstructing anything President Obama has tried to do for the nation and to end the crisis. Less than a quarter of the electorate is willing to identify themselves as Republican, even in once heavily Red states. Like, oh, I don't know...Nevada?
[I]t has become increasingly clear just how tough a task the Republicans face. Mr. Reid has studied Mr. Daschle’s 2004 loss and is aggressively raising money, building a turnout organization and seeking to disqualify potential rivals, all with the aim of locking up his election to a fifth term well before a single voter goes to the polls in November 2010.
***
Mr. Reid, in an interview in his corner office at the Capitol, said he would raise $25 million for his campaign, a record-breaking figure for a Senate candidate in Nevada. Aides said that sum, which Republicans did not dispute, was intended to give pause to any Republican thinking of taking him on.
Reality Check: The Nevada GOP doesn't even have a likely candidate to field. In fact, as Harry is raising all that moolah, he is running unopposed. He beat the two strongest GOP potentials last time and the state GOP Chair doesn't even want to mention any names right now. Can't blame her: one of their best choices "was indicted in December on charges of mishandling public money when he was the state treasurer" (corruption being apparently an inherent feature of GoOPerism) and the other would have to give up an endangered House seat to run a Quixote-esque campaign he would almost certainly lose.
So what exactly is it that makes Reid a "tempting target", Adam? Seats don't get much safer than that.
What Adam hints is the reason - Tom Dashle's loss in '04 that seems to haunt Reid like Marley's Ghost - is hardly the stuff of legend so much as the stuff of paranoia. Reid is so frightened of losing his seat that he has deliberately sabotaged every single Democratic bill that might conceivably be used to paint him as that dreaded monster, a liberal. Apparently if he doesn't give the store away to the Republicans, he thinks he might lose it just because he knows who Nancy Pelosi is.
Mr. Reid has taken increasing care not to be identified with some of the more liberal leaders in his party. Republicans say that whomever they run against him, a central part of the campaign will be to link him with Democratic figures like Representative Nancy Pelosi of California, the speaker of the House.
So it did not hurt him that in keeping with his longtime stance on gun issues, he was able last week to support successfully a provision eliminating the ban on loaded firearms in national parks, and previously voted to repeal most of the District of Columbia’s gun control regulations. In a display of self-preservation, he also broke with the administration in leading his caucus against providing the money that the president had sought to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
Basically, b's & g's, we're getting GOP rule from the Senate Dems because Harry Reid is terrified of a challenge from his Right that essentially doesn't exist. Too bad he isn't worried even a little bit about a challenge from his Left. Too bad he's willing to send the country flying over the edge of the precipice to save his fucking job. Too bad his job is so fucking important to him when he can't remember what it is. Or what party he belongs to.
All the BD's and so-called "moderates" are operating at the same fear level and reacting to the same largely imaginary threats as if they were actual. They seem to have bought the hysteria that Republicans have been selling without examining it or thinking about it much.
Which means, of course, that they've bought the GOP line that the public is hysterical and isn't examining or thinking about the reasons much. And they've bought these canards despite polls that tell them exactly the opposite.
Which means, of course, that they have decided to be unmoved by facts that don't agree with their presuppositions - iow, their own ideological slant on the issues.
Which means, of course, that the Democratic Party no longer exists as it is being run by Republicans who are in ideological sympathy with the GOP but have to pretend they aren't.
Which means, of course, that we're back in Parador where we have a choice between Red Simms and Blue Simms but when you peek behind the curtain they're all the same guys.
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