harry reid – Page 9

#rsrh Harry Reid loses key Dem demographic.

Not even the dead want him re-elected at this point:

Chances are good you never met Charlotte McCourt during her 84 years, but I’m willing to bet you’ll be hearing about her in the coming days now that her obituary has taken Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to task.

[snip]

Her obituary, printed in Tuesday’s Review-Journal, reads in part, “We believe that Mom would say she was mortified to have taken a large role in the election of Harry Reid to U.S. Congress. Let the record show Charlotte was displeased with his work. Please, in lieu of flowers, vote for another more worthy candidate.”

And here we all thought that a Democrat could never lose the necro-American vote.

Crossposted to RedState.

El senador Harry Reid se cree que todos ustedes son idiotas*.

And Harry Reid thinks that he himself is scared. For good reason: when you’re in good shape, you don’t talk like this.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid lashed out at Republicans as the “anti-immigrant party” in an interview aired Sunday on Univision.

[snip]

Talking with the “Al Punto” program, the Nevada Democrat refused to tell host Jorge Ramos whether he would first bring an energy or an immigration bill to the floor.

“Both of those issues, we need a Republican,” Reid said.

At times testy, he avoided taking any responsibility for his failure to move either piece of legislation.

(Via The DC Caller) As an intimation of DOOM this article is most excellent. You got your bluster, you got your lies**, you got your defensiveness – and, best of all, you got your Politico writing up this entire exercise in would-be pandering with a skeptical air. The truth is of course that the Democrats have the votes to pass anything that they please… but they’re scared of the popular reaction to an immigration bill that shows the same lack of engagement that the GOP that the health care fiasco had. Unfortunately – for Reid – a bill that would be good for Democrats will be downright awful for him, seeing as he’s trying to do the aforementioned pandering. Of course, if he cared about others more than for his own hide, he wouldn’t be trying to wound his own party in order to keep himself in office for just six more years…

Moe Lane Continue reading El senador Harry Reid se cree que todos ustedes son idiotas*.

Reid’s Nevadan stalking horse up on criminal charges.

Oops.

And so (I suspect) ends the sad, vaguely sordid, and rather bizarre tale of Scott Ashjian. You should have vetted your spoiler candidate better, Harry:

A Nevada asphalt contractor who faces a legal challenge to his Tea Party of Nevada candidacy for U.S. Senate was hit Friday with felony theft and bad check charges in Las Vegas that allege he bounced a $5,000 business check last year.

Scott Ashjian is one of a record 22 candidates, including 12 Republicans, running for the seat held by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who is seeking a fifth term.

Bernie Zadrowski, head of the Clark County district attorney’s office bad check unit, said he would seek an arrest warrant Monday in Las Vegas Justice Court. Ashjian could face up to 14 years in state prison if convicted.

Via Hot Air Headlines. The actual Tea Party folks have already been pretty adamant about pointing out that they don’t know this guy, but there’s nothing like a bad-check felony arrest to torpedo an election bid. Which means that the major Republican candidates can get back to the happy task of determining who is the most conservative of all (and thus worthy of the honor of beating Harry Reid like a drum), and that Harry Reid can get back to creating the tradition that Democratic Senate Majority Leaders always end their terms by losing a re-election bid…

Moe Lane

PS: Of course, there’s always the possibility that the Ashjian thing was really a convoluted cry for help on Reid’s part. You know, a subconscious wish to fail or something like that. It’d explain the lack of vetting, at least.

Crossposted to RedState.

Who should Obama campaign for next?

I have a list. Lists, really.

Via Hot Air Headlines comes your feel-good news of the morning:

During his whirlwind visit to Las Vegas two weeks ago, President Barack Obama mentioned U.S. Sen. Harry Reid by name four dozen times, gave him a big hug and talked him up as if he was a long-lost brother.

[snip]

A larger percentage of voters surveyed (17 percent) said they would be less likely to vote for Reid following the president’s visit than said they would be more likely to vote for him (7 percent). Seventy-five percent said Obama’s visit would have no effect on how they vote.

The administration is claiming – now – that the President wasn’t in Nevada to stump for Reid (he certainly wasn’t there to apologize to Nevadans for slamming Las Vegas again), mostly because the administration has far too many people in it who discount the average intelligence of the average American voter. Meanwhile, they found a political science guy* willing to claim that this isn’t as bad as it looks, because it’s only likely voters that got surveyed, and the President was trying to shore up Reid’s support among registered voters.

No, really.

At any rate, if President Obama feels up to it I’d personally like him to extend his tour. Could he actively support and stump for every Democrat on this, this, and this list? Particularly the ones particularly at-risk. That’d be a help, thanks.

Moe Lane
Continue reading Who should Obama campaign for next?

Congressional Democrats still wondering who the sucker was at yesterday’s summit.

When Hot Air and the Daily Beast are giving the same review – Republicans looked good, the President looked all right, other Democrats looked bad – you have to end up wondering whether the President actually minds. Jonah Goldberg fairly accurately sums up what Obama has to work with, after all:

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi relied on the Democrats’ favorite rhetorical gambit: policy-by-anecdote. Invoking the sad plight of some person no one knows can be effective, but we’ve been hearing such stories for a very long time; support for Pelosi’s solutions has still plummeted.

But it was Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, mugging for his doomed reelection bid at home, who put the ugliest face on the Democratic party. Cranky, mean, and short-tempered, Reid seemed like he was sitting on a carpet tack throughout the discussion. He snapped that “no one is talking about reconciliation” — a reference to the arcane parliamentary procedure Democrats are considering as a means to ram their unpopular bill through Congress.

That’s true, save for the more than 100 House Democrats and more than 20 Senate Democrats who have already signed letters calling for reconciliation. His crotchety dyspepsia, combined with his arrogant dishonesty, made the leader of the Senate seem like the sort of oldster who would pinch little kids for fun if he could get away with it.

Imagine for a moment a world where the 112th Congress is not being run by Pelosi and Reid. Do you think that the President might end up with a health care reform bill that… forget ‘he can happily sign to show how bipartisan he is.’ At this point, the President will settle for a bill that he can actually sign. Which was the ostensible point of this summit to begin with; and the only event of real note there was a rather pointed refutation of the Democratic lie that Republicans have no health care ideas or plans. Not even David Gergen wants to run with that meme anymore.

I’ve noted this before, and I’ll note it again: both of the two major American political party are really two mini-parties. There’s the legislative one, which concerns itself with Congress and the state houses; and then there’s the executive one, which deals with the Presidency and the governorships. The two groups are usually more-or-less working in tandem; but they don’t always have congruent, or even parallel, objectives. Put it less pretentiously: what’s good for President Obama isn’t necessarily good for Speaker Pelosi and SML Reid. And if the President comes out of this looking good, he may not care about how badly his colleagues look in comparison…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Here we go again with the 3rd party anxieties… #rsrh

Allahpundit’s worried and Jim Geraghty’s… not… over this report that a fake “Tea Party” candidate (I’m not going to pretend that Ashjian’s anything but that, sorry) could win the election in Nevada for Harry Reid (who has a 58% disapproval rating in the poll from said article). The scenarios involve a 9% to 11% showing for said third-party candidate, when put up against Lowden and/or Tarkanian…

Why, yes. That is precisely the path of victory that the polls showed in NJ last year when they showed Christie losing. Ask former Governor Corzine how well Daggett’s eventual numbers worked out for him. And no, individual third-party candidates typically don’t take 10% of the vote in Nevada. In fact, collectively third-party candidates don’t take 10% of the vote, either. Usually, they’re lucky to break 6%.

In other words: if this is the Democrats’ strategy, then I might as well start in on declaring DOOM for them now and save time.

Moe Lane

PS: It’s way too soon for DOOM, of course.

Harold Ford politely declares war on Democratic Establishment.

[UPDATE] Welcome, Instapundit readers.

Glenn Reynolds and Kleinheider both focused on Ford’s unwillingness to take Obama’s direction on who should be the anointed junior Senator from New York, but the real hit there took place earlier:

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‘No Negro dialect.’ Admittedly, beating up on Harry Reid is fun – at this rate, I could run against him and win, and the only times I’ve ever been in Nevada was when I’ve flown over it – but it’s a sign of just how bad the year promises to be for the Democratic party*. After all, Reid is Senate Majority Leader.

Currently.

Moe Lane

*Ford has promised that if “I am elected senator from New York, Harry Reid will not instruct me how to vote” – and you know? That’s looking like it’s going to be a really easy promise for him to make.

I’m gobsmacked. So is Sen. McCain. Heck, so is Sen. Durbin.

(Via Hot Air Headlines) Avoiding boggling gets harder and harder every day:

Senate Majority Whip Richard Durbin admitted Friday that he is “in the dark” about the national health care bill currently under construction by Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. In an exchange on the Senate floor, Republican Sen. John McCain asked Durbin, “Should we not at least be informed as to what the proposal is that the Senate Majority Leader is going to propose to the entire Senate?” Durbin’s answer: “I would say to the senator from Arizona that I am in the dark almost as much as he is, and I am in the leadership.” Durbin explained that during a Democratic caucus, Reid and the small group of senators involved in crafting the bill turned to their fellow Democrats and “basically stood and said, ‘We are sorry, we can’t tell you in detail what was involved.'”

Transcript here.

I can say nothing else except that while this is not enough to persuade me to show some sympathy to Dick Durbin (whom I despise for his attacks on minority students), this is still no way to run a railroad. Or a Congress.

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.

Sen. Reid to GOP: I need some time off to raise money.

He had a fundraiser in New Orleans that he rather badly needed to do, and never mind the rhetoric on how important it is to pass health care rationing.

The GOP mocked him, as was only fitting. The GOP is, in fact, using it as local campaign fodder; and so Senator Reid doesn’t get to go to New Orleans. He’s quite upset about it, too*: it’s unclear to whether it’s from being done unto as he has done, or simply because Reid needs all the help that he can get.

Moe Lane

*I don’t know: is he about to cry? I think that Reid looks likes he’s about to cry.

Crossposted to RedState.

Senate Majority Leader Reid’s successful public option rollout.

No, seriously: successful. You see, by Mary Katharine Ham’s count Reid only explicitly lost Senators Lieberman and Lincoln from his own caucus, and Senators Collins & Snowe from ours for his clumsy and ill-planned advocacy of a government ‘public’ option in the Senate health care rationing bill. It was not unreasonable to expect that Reid would not only alienate those four, but Senators Ben Nelson and Landrieu as well; so if one looks at this result and squints it sort of looks like a win for the Senate Majority Leader. If one grades on the curve, that is.

Then again, while the question is not yet moot, there’s a certain amount of mootness creeping in right now…

Moe Lane

Crossposted to RedState.