What’s your position on the Mattis waiver?” a staffer asked Reid, referring to the waiver that would allow Trump’s secretary of Defense nominee, retired Marine general James Mattis, to serve in the post despite a law barring recently retired military officers from the job.
“The waiver should not be granted in this Congress,” Reid said.
Another aide brought up Joe Biden’s recent remark that he was thinking about running for president in 2020. “Would you support him?” she inquired.
“It depends on who’s running,” Reid replied. “It appears we’re going to have an old-folks’ home. We’ve got [Elizabeth] Warren; she’ll be 71. Biden will be 78. Bernie [Sanders] will be 79.”
For half an hour, Reid and his staffers discussed how, in his final days in the Senate, he could equip his Democratic colleagues with the things they’d need to obstruct Trump’s agenda
But the most pressing issue confronting Reid that morning was far from that day’s headlines. It had to do with how a couple of crucial and much-ballyhooed new federal medical initiatives — one combating opioid abuse and the other promoting cancer research — would be funded next year.
Even here, Reid’s staffers had surfaced yet another worrisome consequence of losing a presidential election to someone no one believed could win. The programs’ funding language was tucked into a spending bill that would keep the government running for the next four months and that would come to a vote later that week; the language appeared sufficiently vague that Reid’s staff was concerned that the Trump administration would have too much leeway in how it spent the money. Rather than send the funds to states with the biggest opioid-addiction problems, Trump might steer it to, say, Texas —“Not that Texas doesn’t deserve opioid money,” Kate Leone, one of Reid’s policy wonks, hastened to add. And the money for the cancer initiative — which, the day before, in an emotional and rare bipartisan moment on the Senate floor, had been named in honor of the late Beau Biden while his father, Joe, presided over the chamber — would be given in a lump sum to the National Institutes of Health, which didn’t necessarily have to spend it on cancer research. “They can use it on regenerative medicine if they want,” Leone explained, referring to another NIH initiative that’s the pet project of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “I don’t think we’d care as much about this if Obama was there for all of 2017,” Leone said.
Reid was perturbed by these assessments, which were news to him. “I have never heard that,” he complained. “In the hour I spent this morning” — with his *Senate leadership team headed by Chuck Schumer, Richard Durbin, and Patty Murray — “no one ever raised that.”
The White House was aware of the problem, explained Drew Willison, Reid’s chief of staff, but “the White House as usual wants us to do their work and won’t help us at all with any leverage.”
“I want somebody prepared at the lunch today talking about the opioid funding,” Reid said. “No one has been talking about that.”
Leone suggested Murray for the assignment.
“She sure didn’t say anything this morning,” Reid said.
“She’s hard to motivate,” Bill Dauster, Reid’s deputy chief of staff for policy, conceded. With both parties toasting themselves for passing the feel-good medical initiatives, there were worries that raising nettlesome questions about their funding would seem churlish.
“So am I going to call on her to explain the problem?” Reid asked. He was met with silence. “Bill,” Reid finally said, “if you would put some talking points in my language, I will say it.”
“As my staff will tell you,” Reid said to me when we spoke the next day, “I’ve done a number of things because no one else will do it. I’ve done stuff no one else will do.” I expected him to give an *example of a successful parliamentary maneuver or perhaps a brave political endorsement, but instead he mentioned one of the most disreputable episodes of his long career, when, during the 2012 presidential campaign, he falsely accused Mitt Romney of not having paid his taxes. “I tried to get everybody to do that. I didn’t want to do that,” Reid said. “I didn’t have anything against him personally. He’s a fellow Mormon, nice guy. I went to everybody. But no one would do it. So I did it
s the reality of Trump’s election — coupled with the GOP’s continued control of Congress — slowly sank in among shell-shocked Democrats in the final weeks of 2016, a second, almost equally jarring revelation began to dawn on them as well: They wouldn’t have Harry Reid around anymore to help them deal with this new nightmare.
Although Reid was not the most visible protagonist in national politics — it was Obama, of course, whom Democrats turned to for inspirational words, and unlike, say, Nancy Pelosi or Ted Kennedy, Reid wasn’t a staple of Republican direct mail or attack ads — he was, in Washington, a legendary figure. Especially over the past decade. To Republicans on Capitol Hill, he was an arch-villain — “the worst leader of the Senate ever,” as Mitch McConnell called him in 2013, when Reid, then the majority leader, changed the Senate rules so that only a simple majority, rather than 60 votes, was needed to confirm presidential appointees. “He was bad for the country and bad for Democrats,” says the Republican strategist Doug Heye. But to Democrats, Reid was indispensable — not only the man who helped them win back control of the Senate in 2006 but also the party insider who encouraged Barack Obama to run for president and, later, the parliamentary wizard who helped pass Obama’s legislative agenda. “He was a crucial partner to the president,” says David Axelrod. “I love the guy. He’s canny, relentless, and yet deeply committed to politics as something more than the acquisition of power.”
The man who’ll be replacing Reid as the Democrats’ Senate leader is Chuck Schumer. This is by Reid’s design. The taciturn Mormon from Nevada and the manic Jew from New York were one of the odder couples on Capitol Hill, but they had a remarkably close — and successful — partnership. Democrats talk of the pair’s work during the 2006 midterms — when Reid was the Senate minority leader and Schumer ran the party’s campaign arm — in the tones Yankees fans use to speak of Mantle and Maris. In many ways, Schumer was the perfect complement to Reid. “Senator Reid never cared about messaging, and he sure as hell didn’t care about polls,” says Jim Manley, Reid’s former communications director, “but Schumer certainly thrives on that stuff.” Unlike Reid, Schumer also had good working relationships with many of his Republican *colleagues. More than anything, though, Reid — who grew up in abject poverty and moonlighted as a Capitol police officer to put himself through George Washington law school — admired Schumer’s hustle. “He knows that Chuck’s the guy who works his ass off,” says one Reid adviser.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...rry-reid-did-now-that-harry-reid-is-gone.html
(more political hackery at link)
“The waiver should not be granted in this Congress,” Reid said.
Another aide brought up Joe Biden’s recent remark that he was thinking about running for president in 2020. “Would you support him?” she inquired.
“It depends on who’s running,” Reid replied. “It appears we’re going to have an old-folks’ home. We’ve got [Elizabeth] Warren; she’ll be 71. Biden will be 78. Bernie [Sanders] will be 79.”
For half an hour, Reid and his staffers discussed how, in his final days in the Senate, he could equip his Democratic colleagues with the things they’d need to obstruct Trump’s agenda
But the most pressing issue confronting Reid that morning was far from that day’s headlines. It had to do with how a couple of crucial and much-ballyhooed new federal medical initiatives — one combating opioid abuse and the other promoting cancer research — would be funded next year.
Even here, Reid’s staffers had surfaced yet another worrisome consequence of losing a presidential election to someone no one believed could win. The programs’ funding language was tucked into a spending bill that would keep the government running for the next four months and that would come to a vote later that week; the language appeared sufficiently vague that Reid’s staff was concerned that the Trump administration would have too much leeway in how it spent the money. Rather than send the funds to states with the biggest opioid-addiction problems, Trump might steer it to, say, Texas —“Not that Texas doesn’t deserve opioid money,” Kate Leone, one of Reid’s policy wonks, hastened to add. And the money for the cancer initiative — which, the day before, in an emotional and rare bipartisan moment on the Senate floor, had been named in honor of the late Beau Biden while his father, Joe, presided over the chamber — would be given in a lump sum to the National Institutes of Health, which didn’t necessarily have to spend it on cancer research. “They can use it on regenerative medicine if they want,” Leone explained, referring to another NIH initiative that’s the pet project of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell. “I don’t think we’d care as much about this if Obama was there for all of 2017,” Leone said.
Reid was perturbed by these assessments, which were news to him. “I have never heard that,” he complained. “In the hour I spent this morning” — with his *Senate leadership team headed by Chuck Schumer, Richard Durbin, and Patty Murray — “no one ever raised that.”
The White House was aware of the problem, explained Drew Willison, Reid’s chief of staff, but “the White House as usual wants us to do their work and won’t help us at all with any leverage.”
“I want somebody prepared at the lunch today talking about the opioid funding,” Reid said. “No one has been talking about that.”
Leone suggested Murray for the assignment.
“She sure didn’t say anything this morning,” Reid said.
“She’s hard to motivate,” Bill Dauster, Reid’s deputy chief of staff for policy, conceded. With both parties toasting themselves for passing the feel-good medical initiatives, there were worries that raising nettlesome questions about their funding would seem churlish.
“So am I going to call on her to explain the problem?” Reid asked. He was met with silence. “Bill,” Reid finally said, “if you would put some talking points in my language, I will say it.”
“As my staff will tell you,” Reid said to me when we spoke the next day, “I’ve done a number of things because no one else will do it. I’ve done stuff no one else will do.” I expected him to give an *example of a successful parliamentary maneuver or perhaps a brave political endorsement, but instead he mentioned one of the most disreputable episodes of his long career, when, during the 2012 presidential campaign, he falsely accused Mitt Romney of not having paid his taxes. “I tried to get everybody to do that. I didn’t want to do that,” Reid said. “I didn’t have anything against him personally. He’s a fellow Mormon, nice guy. I went to everybody. But no one would do it. So I did it
s the reality of Trump’s election — coupled with the GOP’s continued control of Congress — slowly sank in among shell-shocked Democrats in the final weeks of 2016, a second, almost equally jarring revelation began to dawn on them as well: They wouldn’t have Harry Reid around anymore to help them deal with this new nightmare.
Although Reid was not the most visible protagonist in national politics — it was Obama, of course, whom Democrats turned to for inspirational words, and unlike, say, Nancy Pelosi or Ted Kennedy, Reid wasn’t a staple of Republican direct mail or attack ads — he was, in Washington, a legendary figure. Especially over the past decade. To Republicans on Capitol Hill, he was an arch-villain — “the worst leader of the Senate ever,” as Mitch McConnell called him in 2013, when Reid, then the majority leader, changed the Senate rules so that only a simple majority, rather than 60 votes, was needed to confirm presidential appointees. “He was bad for the country and bad for Democrats,” says the Republican strategist Doug Heye. But to Democrats, Reid was indispensable — not only the man who helped them win back control of the Senate in 2006 but also the party insider who encouraged Barack Obama to run for president and, later, the parliamentary wizard who helped pass Obama’s legislative agenda. “He was a crucial partner to the president,” says David Axelrod. “I love the guy. He’s canny, relentless, and yet deeply committed to politics as something more than the acquisition of power.”
The man who’ll be replacing Reid as the Democrats’ Senate leader is Chuck Schumer. This is by Reid’s design. The taciturn Mormon from Nevada and the manic Jew from New York were one of the odder couples on Capitol Hill, but they had a remarkably close — and successful — partnership. Democrats talk of the pair’s work during the 2006 midterms — when Reid was the Senate minority leader and Schumer ran the party’s campaign arm — in the tones Yankees fans use to speak of Mantle and Maris. In many ways, Schumer was the perfect complement to Reid. “Senator Reid never cared about messaging, and he sure as hell didn’t care about polls,” says Jim Manley, Reid’s former communications director, “but Schumer certainly thrives on that stuff.” Unlike Reid, Schumer also had good working relationships with many of his Republican *colleagues. More than anything, though, Reid — who grew up in abject poverty and moonlighted as a Capitol police officer to put himself through George Washington law school — admired Schumer’s hustle. “He knows that Chuck’s the guy who works his ass off,” says one Reid adviser.
http://nymag.com/daily/intelligence...rry-reid-did-now-that-harry-reid-is-gone.html
(more political hackery at link)
