(Michael Zahara) – Yet another Democratic seat will go to the GOP; this time in the US Senate and that news will perhaps place an insurmountable challenge to maintaining a majority in that body too as the US House is already gone for Democrats this November.
And with each departure, political observers are finding one common denominator; our very own Senator Harry Reid.
In his farewell speech, Senator Evan Bayh cited the failure of the bipartisan effort at deficit reduction as a frustration, but what sent Bayh over-the-top on the decision he’d been contemplating on and off for several months was the obnoxiousness of Harry Reid pulling the ‘jobs’ bill effort both sides had worked on for weeks for no other reason than playing politics with Americans’ lives just for political sport.
Evan Bayh needed to come home with something too despite his generous local approval ratings.
Senator Evan Bayh has always detested Reid and Reid’s hyper-partisanship and very publicly showed his disdain for the majority leader by not calling our senator-his own majority leader-for over an hour after the news was already out and confirmed by the news media.
Bayh was considered for Vice-President by Al Gore, John Kerry, and Barack Obama respectively, and was the 1st runner-up to Joe Biden in 2008. Mrs Obama and Valerie Jarrett were the two who pushed Biden over Bayh for his national security/foreign policy credentials to help boost a weaker link for our now president and we were the first in the country to tell you that in June of 2008 on these pages.
Indiana has one of the nation’s highest jobless rates and Bayh is an anomaly in that traditional Red state, though voting only 70% with his party and enjoying broad affection locally. The Democrats have lost a quiet, contemplative leader to the poison that oozes from Harry Reid every single day on Capital Hill.
We’ll be saying good-bye to a few more Dem senators in the coming weeks too.
Current Dem seats going to the GOP this November:
•Nevada
•North Dakota
•Illinois
•Delaware
•Arkansas
•Pennsylvania
•Colorado
•Indiana
I’m becoming concerned about Wisconsin and several others now too.
It’s a certainty that Senator Harry Reid will be remembered by history as the man who personally assassinated the Democratic Party all for his genetic evil and his addiction to ‘gotcha’ politics. He began personally poisoning the well of comity in the US Senate on November 1, 2005, as then minority leader, when he invoked what’s known as ‘Rule 21’ and closed the session in what purist, old bull senators from both parties thought a appalling deviation from decades long accepted US Senate protocols honored and respected by both parties.
Senators and staffers from both parties were seething privately and within hours Senator Dick Durbin had the votes to either become minority or majority leader the following November, but he cunningly chose not to push it then.
Dick Durbin still has the votes today! No one in American history has risen faster in House or Senate leadership than Durbin and he sensed the current Reid bloodbath long before most others did.
The Republicans were especially livid at the time because although any member can pull such a stunt, none would dare do so while in the minority and the fellow not-so-quietly seething in the background was then majority whip, Senator Mitch McConnell, now minority leader and one of those old bulls and purists.
I wrote the following day and have been writing ever since then that Harry Reid would not be re-elected and November 1, 2005 is the real reason why.
When Harry Reid complains about GOP obstructionism today irrespective of his gigantic Democratic majorities in both Houses, it is Senator McConnell who has kept all of his ducks in a row as his personal thank-you to Reid for his 2005 arrogance and disrespect to the then GOP majority and to the institution of the United States Senate.
This isn’t at all about Barack, but about Harry and Mitch and the President knows it and has always known what was coming between these two men.
He was there in 2005 too and that’s the reason President Obama has let this all play out in the Congress rather than muddy his own hands by introducing his own legislation on anything.
Call it a very necessary blood-letting the President wisely stood back from; Harry Reid’s loss will be Barack Obama’s gain. He knows better than anyone else that he can’t get anything done without cleansing the poison of the Democratic Party that is Harry Reid, first.
It should also be noted that Harry Reid only became majority leader because of two senators, Dodd and Dorgan, who wanted a pro-financial industry patsy to take all of the heat for them and Dodd and Dorgan won out after the Dems won majorities in 2006 in the palace intrigue that goes with choosing leadership in both parties.
But now that Dorgan and Dodd are out, the vultures aren’t even circling over Harry Reid today, they’re picking at his political carcass in broad daylight; Both Durbin and Schumer are very public in angling for the job of SML; something never before seen in the history of the Senate with so many months to go before Senator Harry Reid is defeated.
What you’re seeing today is the very public dismembering of Senator Harry Reid by his own members.
There will be no Phoenix rising from the ashes in November for Senator Harry Reid. His own fellow Dem senators will work behind the scenes to ensure his defeat; they’re already doing so.
Harry Reid isn’t a lame duck, he’s a dead duck!
(Mr. Zahara is a Democrat blogger who publishes at WatchdogWag.com)