Dems Will Miss Harry Reid; Schumer Is Poor Substitute

I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again, I am really going to miss Harry Reid. He was a street fighter who was not afraid to get his hands dirty and fight the Republicans on their level. And that is what it will take to fend off the onslaught that Trump/Pence and the Republicans have planned for the next four years. It sure doesn’t look like there is any Democrat in the Senate who is capable of filling his shoes. Kevin Drum points us to a story by Jason Zengerle at NY Magazine that is a nice profile of Reid and how his successor, Chuck Schumer, looks to be a poor substitute.

One of the most telling moments was when Reid went on the Senate floor in 2012 and accused Mitt Romney of not paying any taxes. Romney, like Trump, was trying to get through the elections campaign without releasing his taxes. The tactic forced Romney to release his taxes which showed that Reid was not correct but also showed that Romney’s effective tax rate was just over 14%. According to Reid, “I tried to get everybody to do that. I didn’t want to do that. 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.” It is a sad state of affairs that no Democratic Senator was willing to do what Reid did. And, As Kevin Drum points out, the story also vividly illustrates the so-called “hack gap”. There would have been multiple Republican elected officials and press outlets that would have picked up this story and pounded away at it 24/7 for weeks. As Drum says, “Sean Hannity would have practically paid for the privilege. Rush Limbaugh would have happily spent an entire show on it. The Wall Street Journal edit page would have been all over it. Newt Gingrich would have pitched in. At least 20 or 30 members of the House would have been happy to do it. I bet Jim Inhofe would have given a speech in the well of the Senate in a heartbeat. Half a dozen Super PACs would have rushed to buy air time. But among liberals, zilch. No one would do something like this.” And, of course, because so few Democrats were willing to stand up in 2012, Trump probably felt even more emboldened in his stance to not release his taxes this year. And now that the precedent has been set, the incentives and the chances of future candidates releasing there taxes are just not there. Of course, Trump and the Republicans are responsible for destroying this norm, but Democrats certainly bear a small part of the blame for not fighting Trump hard enough on the issue. Yes, even Hillary pointed out that Trump probably did not pay any taxes. But I never heard any Democrat go on record as saying that Trump refuses to release his taxes because it would show massive tax evasion. I can guarantee Republicans would have gone there if the situation was reversed.

Zengerle’s article also highlights just how weak Reid’s fellow Senate Democrats are. Schumer’s initial moves are particularly disturbing. His embrace of Trump’s campaign pledge on infrastructure may put Democrats in a real bind when the plan the administration actually puts forward turns out to basically be a privatization scheme under the guise of infrastructure spending. Despite the fact the Congressional GOP leadership seems opposed to any infrastructure spending, they will probably be slightly more interested in moving forward if it puts big money in the pockets of their corporate donors. Schumer has commented that, “We think it [the infrastructure package] should be large. He’s mentioned a trillion dollars. I told him [Trump] that sounded good to me.” Those words may come back to haunt him and the Democrats.

On a broader level, Zengerle’s piece also points out how Schumer is always playing it safe, a strategy that will be death for Democrats in this environment. According to one Senate aide, “Chuck will go to the ramparts on an issue when it’s polling at 60 percent, but as soon as it gets hairy, he’s gone. Chuck wants issues to have no negatives, but it’s the Trump era. He’s looking at polls ­showing 60 percent for the Carrier deal and thinking to himself, ‘Maybe we should support that’.“  Democrats are in serious trouble if this is the thinking of the minority leader. Rather than trying to signal the issues on which he can “work” with Trump, Schumer and the Democrats need to be laying down the markers for the upcoming onslaught on Obamacare, Medicare, and even Social Security. Right now, every Democrat should be making the case that repealing Obamacare will result not only in the loss of health insurance, but an increase in medical bankruptcies, and hundreds if not thousands of unnecessary deaths. Every Democrat should be talking about how every American pays into Medicare while they are working to receive their entitled benefits when they retire. To privatize Medicare is to steal from those “savings” that people have worked their whole life to put away for their health in old age. That privatizing Medicare will result in more poverty for the elderly and more unnecessary deaths. If those Senators in red states who are up for re-election in 2018 think that they can win by being Republican-lite, they are sadly mistaken. And, as Reid showed in Nevada, if you really want to succeed as a Democratic Senator, you need to make sure you help build a strong state party on the ground. That is surely another lesson for Democrats. If anything, the most recent election has shown that you only win when you fight hard, pound away at your message, and fight dirty when necessary. And it has also shown that total obstruction works against the party that holds the Presidency. Anything less will allow Trump and the Republicans to tout their bipartisan success.

Zengerle’s article shows just how few Democrats are willing to play the dirty game of politics. From Obama on down to Patty Murray, Democrats always relied on Reid to do the dirty work for them. And he did. Harry Reid took up the fight against Social Security privatization back in 2005 and united Democrats in that battle, a battle that they won. That should be a lesson to Chuck Schumer. We need another Harry Reid more than ever. I will miss him. And so will Democrats.