http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=C5BA1398-D850-470A-9F95-DFF9765292ED Senate Democrats stand by Harry Reid
By: Burgess Everett
November 5, 2014 09:59 PM EST
Senate Democrats lost their majority on Harry Reid’s watch. But they’re closing ranks around him anyway.
In interviews with more than a half-dozen surviving Democratic senators and several top aides on Wednesday, many agreed that Americans booted some of their colleagues at least in part because of the perception that Reid’s Senate was getting little done. There were few pieces of landmark legislation to boast about, a dearth of votes on amendments and at times the chamber seemed little more than a clearinghouse for President Barack Obama’s nominees.
But most Democrats have Reid’s back, prepared to stand by him as minority leader through a tumultuous two years as he simultaneously runs for reelection in Nevada.
Vilified by Republicans’ “Fire Reid campaign,” the Nevada senator is being praised for taking arrows for the party — and seen as Democrats’ best hope to counter the Republican agenda in 2015 that seems likely to provoke the same partisan fights that occurred under Democratic rule.
“Harry’s a fighter. Right now we need fighters in leadership positions because it doesn’t look like Republicans are going to lay down and start an era of harmony,” said Sen. Chris Murphy (D-Conn.).
“He’s been much criticized but underrated as a leader, and sometimes underappreciated,” added Sen. Bob Casey (D-Pa.).
Rather than blaming Reid, many Democrats on Capitol Hill laid Tuesday’s debacle at the feet of the White House, which one aide described as making “mistake after mistake after mistake” on managing crises from Obamacare’s troubled rollout to combating the Islamic State.
Reid has no competition for the leader job after his party suffered debilitating losses to Republicans because Democrats were almost always on board with his tactics. Whether it was sheltering incumbents from charged amendment votes or refusing to put forward legislation that divided Democrats, few senators criticized Reid’s leadership behind closed doors. Even fewer took their complaints public.
That’s not to say Reid is without Democratic detractors. West Virginia Sen. Joe Manchin (D-W.Va.) refused to say he would back Reid in an election race (a Democratic aide said the two spoke cordially on Wednesday morning). Manchin likened Reid’s strategy of running the Senate to West Virginia University’s football team trying to run out the clock on Texas Christian University on Saturday. WVU lost by 1 point; Democrats lost at least seven seats.
“We never get a shot at anything. I’ve been very direct with Harry about that: I think it’s wrong,” Manchin said in a telephone interview. “We didn’t do anything.”
Earlier this year a group of Democrats tried to devise a way to get more votes in the Senate. Sen. Heidi Heitkamp (D-N.D.) said one takeaway from Tuesday’s election is that neither party should try any longer to skirt tough votes that might produce the political drama Reid sought to limit, such as on Obamacare and energy.
“For months, I have been working with some Republican and Democratic senators to try to get the Senate working again, and one piece of that means taking tough votes, including on amendments. Every senator should be able to go home and explain how they voted, not shy away from it,” said Heitkamp, who is also waiting to assess next steps for the caucus until next week’s organizational meetings.
Heitkamp and Manchin’s reason was on full display on the campaign trail: Sen. Mark Begich of Alaska was bludgeoned repeatedly by Republicans for never getting a roll call vote on his amendments during his six years in the Senate. Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) even brought up Begich’s sparse amendment record during an otherwise triumphant Wednesday press conference, as did GOP No. 3 John Thune of South Dakota during an interview.
“There’s no question that Reid’s management of the Senate was a rallying cry,” Thune said. “There wasn’t a public event where our candidates didn’t point out that Reid had completely shut the Senate down.”
But Reid’s defenders dismissed this as an inside-the-Beltway bit of rhetoric that few voters paid heed. And then they lined up behind Reid’s minority leader bid.
After announcing he would again caucus with the Democrats next year and pull the party toward the center, Sen. Angus King (I-Maine) said in a telephone interview that he’d back Reid. So did Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.), perhaps the most liberal member of the caucus.
“I am sympathetic to Harry’s politics. I think Harry is a progressive. For his entire political life, he has stood for working people,” Sanders said. “Running a caucus is a very difficult process, because you have to accommodate people like Joe Manchin who have conservative views … Harry has done a good job in maintaining unity.”
Rather than scapegoat Reid, Democrats instead credited their opposition with making a two-part argument against Democratic senators. Republicans primarily campaigned against Democrats as supporting Obama in lock step. But they also repeatedly blamed Reid for the Senate’s gridlock, and the public largely looked past Democrats’ argument that Republicans were at least as much to blame.
“I was not satisfied by the way the Senate operated. But I put this in a broader context: We faced the most filibusters in history,” said Sen. Ben Cardin (D-Md.).
In the closing stages of the midterm election, Republicans augmented their anti-Reid message by repeatedly blasting Democrats as supporting Obama more than 90 percent of the time. Most of those numbers were derived from procedural votes and nominations, but it didn’t matter. It made for a great soundbite, and with few amendment votes to distance themselves from President Obama and Reid, Democrats like Begich, Mark Pryor of Arkansas, Kay Hagan of North Carolina struggled to demonstrate their independence.
“It was hard to explain why they were voting with the president 96 percent of the time,” said Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.).
While Begich and Manchin grumbled publicly that Reid would not allow more votes on amendments, most of the caucus agreed with his strategy to limit controversial votes that might harm vulnerable incumbents.
In meetings the caucus would band together and agree to opening specific legislation to more amendments. Minutes later, Durbin would get word from one senator or another that a vote on a politically charged health care or energy amendment would spell political death for them.
“My experience has been that it’s not unusual after having a chorus of that in the caucus meeting to have a phone call from one or two members saying, ‘you’re going to kill me,’” he said.
So for all his caucus’ troubles, Reid will return to lead the Democrats for another term and no longer shoulder the blame for the Senate’s management. Instead, the onus will be on Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) and his caucus to follow through on their pledge to open up the Senate floor in a way they claim Reid would not.
The stakes are high: Republicans face a difficult path toward retaining their majority in 2016, so it’s not inconceivable that Reid gets his revenge at the ballot box. The GOP says it’s ready.
“It’ll be a vast change. I think there are members on both sides of the aisle who have never seen the Senate function as intended,” said Sen. Roger Wicker (R-Miss.). “The American people are going to be surprised by how easygoing leader McConnell is.”
