If Harry Reid isn’t reelected, the person most likely to replace him as Majority Leader is Minority Leader Majority Whip Dick Durbin of Illinois. Senator Durbin is pretty close to being the most progressive/liberal member of the upper body. But here’s a question. How much does it matter what the Majority Leader thinks about policy? Personally, I think we’d get more progressive outcomes with Reid and 60 votes than with Durbin and fifty-nine. It’s even debatable that we’d get more progressive outcomes with Reid at 60 than Durbin at sixty. Why? Well, I’m not sure about this, but it would be because Reid is more effective at rounding up the most conservative members of the caucus than Durbin would be.
I think it’s a mistake to think that the Majority Leader of the Senate really does all that much ‘leading.’ Probably the most important attribute is that they be a master of procedure. After that, they need to know what their most recalcitrant members need. As much as I have disagreed with Reid over the years, I’ve almost never got the impression that he was doing something shitty because it was his personal preference. So, I just don’t think we’d gain a whole lot by having Durbin take his job if the cost was to put us below sixty votes. Of course, I’d vote for Bernie Sanders or Jeff Merkley for Majority Leader if given the chance. Durbin would be great. But I bet dollars to donuts that the left would turn on Durbin within three months because they don’t understand what a Majority Leader does. They think everyone should be LBJ, when LBJ wasn’t even LBJ. Majority Leaders are much more shepherds than ‘leaders.’
If Durbin, or anyone who comes into the post, can keep the caucus in line for procedural votes, then that will be miles ahead of what Reid could not do.
For example, Ben Nelson would not be in the trouble he’s in at home if he’d voted for cloture and against the bill. That Reid did nothing to prevent his (and others) hijacking of the bill over a simple procedural vote is unconscionable.
Had Reid taken Bernie Sanders’s advice at the start of the 09 year and made every member of the caucus vote for cloture, the world would be considerably different. He didn’t and we’re here where we are.
I think that was Nelson’s mistake, not Reid’s.
If Nelson were smart, he would have kept his mouth shut instead of becoming the center of the damn universe on health care. By becoming a “hostage taker”, he drew attention to himself. Liberals hated the changes he demanded, conservatives hated that he ultimately voted for the bill. Of course he was doing serious political damage to himself.
As Nate Silver pointed out, his best course of action (and this applies to Lieberman and Lincoln) is to keep quiet, vote for cloture, vote against the final bill, and explain your position clearly.
The way Nelson played it was total amateur hour. Guess he still doesn’t know how to handle being in the majority party with a Dem president.
I agree, I think the power of Majority Leader is vastly overrated. It is nothing at all like the Speaker of the House. I just think that the concept of the Senate as a whole sucks at this point.
What we really need is a progressive member as the head of the Finiance Committee. That position has much more ability to effect the policies that come out of the Senate than Majority Leader.
Well why would Durbin be leader? Wouldn’t it be Schumer?
That’s possible, but I’d expect Durbin to win that contest.
I mean I guess on first glance I’d guess Durbin because he’s the whip, but Schumer has raised an enormous amount of money…
If I had to guess between the two I’d say Schumer.
Could be. The same point would apply though.
In which case we’d probably start longing for the return of Harry Reid.
I think the real problem was with the 60 votes. We should have kicked Lieberman out the the caucus the moment he gave that speech at the Republican convention. The truth is we had maybe only 55 votes anyway to accomplish the kind of change the voters demanded in the last election. With less that 60 votes, do you think the Democrats would just wait until the next election, or would they have fixed the Senate rules to conduct business with a simple majority. The Republicans showed us how to make this change but the Democrats are afraid they may face a Republican President and majority in the Senate in the future. Well, that is going to happen anyway if the Democrats don’t get over their fear and solve some of these pressing issues. Democrats are getting on the wrong side of too many issues to stay in power. If we fail the stop the health insurance companies and the oil speculators from raping the economy along with the big ‘banks’ returning to business as usual, we could get something worse than the Bush/Chaney years
I just don’t think it’s a good idea having a Majority Leader from a red state or even a purple state. Call me crazy. But Tom Daschle and now Harry Reid just aren’t liberal enough to get the job done right.
What would be the difference between Harry Reid and my imagined super-liberal Majority Leader? Well, how about someone who isn’t in love with tradition and procedure. Someone who gets fed up quickly with the filibuster and starts talking about getting rid of it. Someone who actually brings Dawn Johnsen up for a vote to see who really wants to vote against her for stupid reasons.
I think Harry Reid has done some things well in a tough position. But he’s not a fighter. He folds his cards way too early. I’m not sure if there are any uncompromising liberals with a chance at Majority Leader, but I’d take Chuck Schumer or Dick Durbin over Reid any day.
Durbin’s not the Minority Leader, he’s the Majority Whip. That means he’s second in the leadership chain to Reid.
Why would Durbin and not Schumer or someone else likely become leader if Reid wasn’t there? Because Durbin is the second ranking member of the leadership. That’s no guarantee, of course, but Reid was Whip before he became Leader, as was Robert Byrd.
thanks. brain fart.
The same thing could be said about Barack Obama – more a shepherd than a leader.
Reid is down now, because health care is so attacked. He needs time to do it and brag about what he’s done. Don’t underestimate the potential of Republicans to shoot themselves in the foot as they did in New York. This is happening right now in Florida as well.
I’m not a fan of Reid’s but his overall record is very progressive. And the current stir about his remarks is so assinine–He was saying WHY OBAMA WAS ELECTABLE, not that a racist should be elected–that you know the Republicans are grasping at straws.
I don’t know, Dick Durbin is also the Whip and thus has knowledge of where all the live boys and dead girls are, (or at least when to find them should a voting member get difficult). A Senate Leader with that much knowledge. Hello Bi-partisanship.
Then again, Reid may have been incorrectly maligned because Dick does not know where the live boys and dead girls are (seep previous VP for the way he managed to keep Congress in check – with no majority), and thus have no ability to tighten the screws on wayward Senators.
BooMan, is the procedural function of the Senate Majority Leader materially different from that of the Speaker of the House? I’m asking because I don’t know. Obviously, they are each the ones responsible for holding their caucases together on crucial votes. I know that the devil is in the details of what each can and cannot do, and the rules are often quite different for the two chambers.
But if I could pick a different Speaker of the House, I wouldn’t — I don’t think you could ask for much more than Nancy Pelosi’s done. For Senate Majority Leader, on the other hand, I — and I think progressives in general — have a significant beef. I would honestly rather have Durbin, or maybe Schumer, and one less vote in the Senate. We don’t have 60 progressive votes and probably never will, so the issue is going to be having someone who is either a) creative at reaching compromises across the caucus (Schumer); or b) devoted enough to progressive causes that we know he will try his hardest, whether successful or not (Durbin).
The importance of the 60th vote seems, as far as I can tell, to be a myth.
They think everyone should be LBJ, when LBJ wasn’t even LBJ. Majority Leaders are much more shepherds than ‘leaders.’
Schumer used to head the DSCC, right? So that means most members are somewhat beholden to him, correct? Why are liberals/progressives afraid to play a little hardball with each other? If the tables were turned, don’t you think Republicans would threaten caucus members in various ways for being jerks? I mean, there has to be pressure points for every member of the Senate. As stated above, did no one tell Nelson to vote for cloture and vote against the bill and keep his mouth shout the whole while? You’d think Nebraskans would accept that he had to vote for cloture since he calls himself a Democrat. But to the larger point, Reid stinks because he doesn’t seem to know where the pressure points are and because he’s always negotiating from a position of weakness.
Oh those damned lefties. So pushy. So demanding.
The difference between Reid and Durbin would (or at least could) affect two areas: Durbin or somebody like him might be a better voice for the progressive view instead of trying to play “big tent” every time there’s a camera in front of him. Reid just doesn’t get anybody excited about the issues, nor does he take detectable stands — at least not with any consisentcy.
A Durbin might also be more willing to shake up the crust of rules, written and otherwise, that keeps the Senate from being good for much of anything — the filibuster, for example, and the way committee chairs are doled out. Personally I wish we could just send the whole damn institution to a well-deserved final resting place, but that would require a conscious citizenry.
BTW, Durbin is looking so tired and disconnected lately I have to wonder if he’ll even be running again. Being too good for the Senate might finally be taking its toll.