Spontaneous Spine Growth in Senate Dems.

[CmdrWilkens]

I'll start showing a little hope in the dems when some form/advancement of socialized health care is actually signed into law and not a moment before. I've seen too many cases of them showing a glimmer of backbone just to crumple and back down when actually called on their bluff to trust them this time.

The only thing right now making me believe in this even a little are the numbers coming out of Nevada for Reid. Te entire Republcian base is gonna hate him whether health care passes with or without a public option so he can't earn points there, Democrats won't back him enthusiastically without a public option and the more he lets Republicans outmanuever him the more Independents are going to lose faith that he will be effective at anything including whatever their paticular issue preference set is. In other words Reid has the option to either keep surrendering ground (and looking like an incompetent) all the way to deeat in 2010 or he could finally rally his caucus and set the agenda to win back institutional Dem suport from labor and the grassroots left.

I don't have lots of faith because Reid is weak enough for me to believe he will continue to do nothing and let the whole process drift endlessly.

[Patrick Degan]

I'll start showing a little hope in the dems when some form/advancement of socialized health care is actually signed into law and not a moment before. I've seen too many cases of them showing a glimmer of backbone just to crumple and back down when actually called on their bluff to trust them this time.

The only thing right now making me believe in this even a little are the numbers coming out of Nevada for Reid. Te entire Republcian base is gonna hate him whether health care passes with or without a public option so he can't earn points there, Democrats won't back him enthusiastically without a public option and the more he lets Republicans outmanuever him the more Independents are going to lose faith that he will be effective at anything including whatever their paticular issue preference set is. In other words Reid has the option to either keep surrendering ground (and looking like an incompetent) all the way to deeat in 2010 or he could finally rally his caucus and set the agenda to win back institutional Dem suport from labor and the grassroots left.

I don't have lots of faith because Reid is weak enough for me to believe he will continue to do nothing and let the whole process drift endlessly.

Reid is useless. How that man even managed to win election to office at all mystifies me considering that he has a spine of jello, which should be a fatal disqualification for electoral politics. I can only conclude that his opponents were so batshit-insane that even most rightwingers couldn't summon the guts to actually vote for them and just stayed home on election days.

[Pablo Sanchez]

Reid is useless. How that man even managed to win election to office at all mystifies me considering that he has a spine of jello, which should be a fatal disqualification for electoral politics. I can only conclude that his opponents were so batshit-insane that even most rightwingers couldn't summon the guts to actually vote for them and just stayed home on election days.

I don't know. Reid's profile on Wikipedia actually indicates that he has some balls; he evidently served on the Nevada gaming commission and rode out a number of death threats, also assaulting a guy who tried to bribe him. I think Reid's problem goes back to what he was selected to do and be. The Republicans knocked Tom Daschle out of office in 2004 while he was still sitting minority leader, and when the Democrats went shopping for their new leader in the Senate they evidently picked the most Republican-friendly senator they had (except maybe for Ben Nelson, but he's only been in the Senate since 2000). I think this is because he was selected to be a minority leader, meaning that his main job was supposed to be diplomacy with the GOP, who would actually be running the Senate. But then the Republican collapse of 2006 made him majority leader, something that I think he's constitutionally unprepared to do.

[Pelranius]

Reid still seems to be genuinely baffled that the Republicans won't sit down and talk like civilized people, never mind the backstabbing from the likes of Grassley.

[Darth Wong]

Reid still seems to be genuinely baffled that the Republicans won't sit down and talk like civilized people, never mind the backstabbing from the likes of Grassley.

It's possible that Reid has spent years working with some of these people and thought himself to be on good terms with them. They would smile and be friendly and give assurances, and perhaps he was just reluctant to recognize them as the dishonest backstabbing pricks that they are.

A lot of really nasty people are actually surprisingly good at being friendly and personable when face-to-face.

[CmdrWilkens]

Reid still seems to be genuinely baffled that the Republicans won't sit down and talk like civilized people, never mind the backstabbing from the likes of Grassley.

Its not even that, the problem is that Reid isn't even running the negotiations. He has delegated this whole thing to Max baucus without ever bothering to assure himself of the ability to manuever Baucus to conform with the rest of the caucus. Right now he is center stage for a war between Schumer and the rest of the HELP committee Dems and the Conrad/Nelson/Baucus group who are ready to sell healthcare down the aisle if they can avoid being challenged in their next election. He should never have let baucus run freely with his negotiations without having some card he could pull to shut him down (and in turn show that card to the Schumer side to assure them that he was actually running things). He essentially is not running the caucus but rather letting it run itself while serving more as the scorekeeper than the manager.

He is a centrist who does seem incapable of deciding, I think of him as the living embodiment of the golden mean along with a sort of anti-Solomon. He is unwilling to pick a side in almsot any debate, which when you are in the minority gives you quite a bit of leverage within your own caucus (since you can control when they will and won't fight for something) but when you are in the majority it means you don't actually legislate. Nate Silver of 538 made the point some time ago that Reid has made more cloture calls than in any previous Congress during the last session, he simply didn't have the wherewithal to get votes through without assembling supermajorities something that was almost never neccessarry before even during the worst of partisan Congresses.