"Nothing to see here, move along..."
Harry Reid will run for Senate minority leader, and it appears he will have no significant opposition.
Senior Senate Democratic aides said Tuesday night that Reid would have the full support of his entire leadership team, despite his party incurring huge losses on Election Night.
Reid’s top three deputies — Senate Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), Sens. Chuck Schumer (D-N.Y.) and Patty Murray (D-Wash.) — all have vowed to support Reid staying on as Democratic leader, according to officials in each of those offices.
No accountability here, for the man who's presided over taking the Senate from 59-60 seats to now 40-something. The man who went forward with filibuster reform, but not so far as giving the public a functioning chamber. Below, is a letter to my senator, Patty Murray, who was named in the article as seemingly reflexively supporting Reid, despite all of it. You can read it (and use it as template for your own missives, if you like) below the squiggle.
Re: Harry Reid Should Go
Dear Senator Murray,
I was dismayed to read in this morning's press, after a significant drubbing at the polls yesterday, that you and other Senate leadership are already lining up behind Harry Reid as senate minority leader. I'm sorry, but yesterday's debacle (and, it was that) demands accountability from calcified party leadership, including Harry Reid. It does not matter in how much high esteem you may personally hold the man. The fact remains that he has presided over taking the Senate from a 60-seat, filibuster proof majority in 2008 to now presiding over losing the majority entirely. He is also responsible for moving forward with a tepid filibuster reform that was only a marginal improvement for the political cost incurred. Rather than delivering the public a functioning chamber, Mr. Reid and other Senators settled for half-measures. As my mom always said, "Do the job right or don't do it at all." And the job by Mr. Reid has not, by any measure, been done right. The election results speak for themselves.
Is Mr. Reid wholly to blame? Certainly not. You, along with other Senators, and the president have your own fair share, too. But, now is not the time to keep the same failing leadership in power. Now is the time to hold people to account for this most recent debacle--as I will be saying to every party official within hearing. If you aren't willing to take a hard look at yourself, your fellow Senators, including Mr. Reid, and demand accountability, then you are part of the problem. Continuing to support Mr. Reid--almost reflexively apparently--is exactly the opposite of what is needed at this moment. The fault for the present circumstance lies at the top echelons of the party leadership, starting with President Obama and going on down.
If you aren't one of the leaders willing to hold party leadership, yourself, your fellow senators, and the president to account for this abject failure, then you, Sen. Murray, are part of the problem. Heads should roll for this level of a disaster, just as banksters should have gone to jail for what they did to the economy. If you, instead, are determined to keep those heads in place, then don't be surprised when the country refuses to believe that anything in the party has changed or that it should again trust it with leadership of congress. Mr. Obama's hope for change is over. The public has been so disappointed that it simply won't believe in anything changing until they see it first. And a good place to start is cleaning out your own house.
Seriously, if you yourself don't believe that you, in your leadership position, can change this party's direction, then I would urge you, for the good of party and country, to step down and endorse someone for your position who you believe can. The country and the Democratic party, deserves better than this, deserves far more than you, Mr. Schumer, and Mr. Reid (and certainly Mr. Obama) have so far delivered. And they are apparently so distraught that they are now willing to vote for crazy people like Joni Ernst, who promises to proverbially castrate people in order to deliver substantive change and a working government. If you can't beat a candidate that extreme in Iowa, which voted for Obama twice, if you can't come up with a platform of solutions the party will deliver on that can appeal to people and beat back such lunacy, then the problem lies not in the opposition but in the mirror. The country deserves nothing less and it's patience for this party's mealy-mouthed ineffectiveness and its leaders endless list of excuses has run out. So, you and the rest of the party leadership either need to step up and lead, or step down. It's as simple as that.
Sincerely,
[My Philosophy]