Wild about Harry: the 'netroots' love him, but will the Senate majority leader hurt his party?

IN late April, the left-wing activist website DailyKos asked its readers to evaluate the performance of Senate majority leader Harry Reid. Nearly 22,000 so-called Kossacks voted, and the verdict was overwhelming: Almost 90 percent approved of Reid's work. "Sen. Reid, I love you," wrote one admirer, asking that Reid write something for DailyKos "so we can shower you with mojo & love."

At about the same time, the Washington Post's David Broder, the longtime "dean" of the Washington press corps, issued his own evaluation of Reid's work. In an uncharacteristically biting column focused on Reid's comment that the war in Iraq "is lost," Broder called Reid a "continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance." A "long list" of senators, including some from Reid's Democratic caucus, Broder said, are ready for the majority leader's "exhibition of ineptitude to end."

It would be hard to find more telling examples of the two worlds of Harry Reid. On one hand, the far-flung "netroots," the loudest and most uncompromising force in Democratic politics today, love their "Give 'em hell Harry." On the other, Washington moderates, including some Democrats, are offended by his shoot-from-the-hip, gaffe-a-minute style. And there have been rumblings, not just from Broder, that Reid might be in trouble.

Is that true? Is Reid's "exhibition of ineptitude" about to end? Not by a long shot. In fact, interviews with Democrats across the ideological spectrum suggest that Reid is far more popular with his Democratic colleagues than some critics believe--or hope. After Broder's article appeared, all 50 of Reid's fellow Democratic senators wrote the Post to stand by their man. "In contrast to Mr. Broder's insinuations, we believe Mr. Reid is an extraordinary leader," the senators wrote, saying that Reid "has effectively guided the new Democratic majority through these first few months with skill and aplomb." Now, perhaps there were some senators who didn't quite believe that, who felt pressure to be on the team, but the majority of Democrats do indeed support Reid. The fact that any dissenters felt they had to publicly get in line suggests that, for now at least, Harry, Hero of the Netroots, is the man in charge.

The question for Republicans, stuck in the minority, is this: Is that a bad thing? Ever since last November's elections, the GOP has had a two-part strategy in the Senate. The first is to rely on Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell to hold the line against the Democratic majority. The other is to wait for Reid to overreach--or self-destruct. So far, at least, McConnell is holding up his end. As for Reid, talk to Senate insiders, and they'll point to four factors that could ultimately prove the majority leader's undoing.

HIS BLOGGER BUDDIES

"He has strengths," says one plugged-in Democratic strategist. "He has extraordinarily good relationships with his members. He can bring them together and keep them in line. But to the extent that he takes advice or is guided by the blogosphere, it's not only a huge liability, it's a significant problem for the caucus, because their views don't reflect the mainstream. The whole thing that happened with the Fox debate was f***ing lunacy."

The "whole thing" to which the strategist refers is a series of events that played out earlier this year in which Reid originally supported a Democratic presidential debate in his home state of Nevada sponsored by Fox News and then, after some not-so-subtle pressure from the lefty blogosphere, backed down completely. It began in February, when the Nevada Democratic party announced the debate would be held in Reno on August 14. "This is more great news for Nevada," Reid said in a statement. "I'm happy Fox News will be a partner for the August presidential debate."

Within a few days, bloggers were expressing outrage that Democrats would have anything to do with Fox News. "Does this mean that Air America will be hosting a Republican presidential debate?" asked Markos Moulitsas, founder of the DailyKos. "50 demerits for any Democrat who participates in a debate sponsored by the conservative machine's propaganda arm. Seriously. There's no need to further legitimize and enable the GOP's mouthpiece."

A few days later, the powerful netroots activist group MoveOn.org jumped on the issue, sending out a petition saying that Fox is a "right-wing mouthpiece like Rush Limbaugh and the Drudge Report--repeating false Republican talking points to smear Democrats." According to MoveOn, more than 265,000 people signed the petition. Moulitsas soon asked several Democratic campaigns whether they would take part in the Fox debate. The campaigns, he reported, were "conflicted" about the issue. Expanding on the veiled threat he had issued the week before, Moulitsas wrote that the Democratic candidates "could make things easier for themselves by just stating, en masse, that they won't do a Fox News debate ..."

Within hours, John Edwards's deputy campaign manager, Jonathan Prince, sent an e-mail to Moulitsas announcing that Edwards would not participate in the Fox event. "Great job by the Edwards campaign," Moulitsas wrote, "showing real leadership on this issue." A day later, Moulitsas and a few other bloggers confronted Reid on a conference call. The bloggers pressed; Reid caved. "I don't like Fox News," he told them, maintaining that he had not had anything to do with choosing the network for the debate. Reid said he was reviewing the situation; within hours, the debate was canceled.

The bloggers rejoiced. But Reid's surrender dismayed some moderate Democrats. Why cut off the Democratic party from the biggest audience in cable television news? "Fox clearly caters to Republicans," says the Democratic strategist quoted above. "But a lot of [the audience] are not Republicans. A lot are swing voters or independents. To eliminate that channel of communication to that band of voters--when you do things like that, you tend to isolate yourself. That's not a way to reach out; it's a way to reach in."

HIS MOUTH

Sometimes that's an admirable quality, but sometimes it just reveals the unsavory side of Reid's political calculations. Consider four such moments from this April alone:

* In a news conference with Sen. Charles Schumer, chairman of the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, Reid could not conceal his happiness about the political advantages of American setbacks in Iraq. "We're going to pick up Senate seats as a result of this war," Reid said. "Senator Schumer has shown me numbers that are compelling and astounding."

* At another press conference, Reid said not only that the war in Iraq is lost, but that top administration officials know it. "Now, I believe myself that the secretary of state, secretary of defense--and you have to make your own decision as to what the president knows--[both believe] that this war is lost and that the surge is not accomplishing anything," Reid said.

* A few days earlier, responding to the Supreme Court's decision upholding Congress's ban on partial-birth abortion, Reid said, "A lot of us wish that Alito weren't there and O'Connor were there." His point seemed to be that he wished retired justice Sandra Day O'Connor were on the Court so the abortion ban would have been overturned. What Reid did not mention was that he himself had voted in favor the ban.

* Finally, in April, Reid called Vice President Dick Cheney an "attack dog."

Add those to Reid's greatest hits: In May 2005, he said of President Bush, "I think this guy is a loser." In December 2005, he gleefully declared that "we killed the Patriot Act" and also said that then-Senate majority leader Bill Frist had "no institutional integrity." In March 2005, he called then--Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan "one of the biggest political hacks we have in Washington." And in December 2004, Reid called Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas "an embarrassment" whose "opinions are poorly written.

Each of those statements has chipped away at Reid's credibility. But each has endeared him to his supporters on the Democratic left. When Reid says something outrageous, David Broder hears ineptitude. The netroots hear courage. And even mainstream Democrats say Reid is energizing an important segment of the party. "He has to speak up for the people who believe there hasn't been a voice of dissent on Capitol Hill," says Donna Brazile, the strategist who managed Al Gore's 2000 presidential campaign. "They're sick and tired of these Democratic leaders who had to bend over and bow down to the Republican majority. They want a leader to show some backbone."

HIS RECORD

During the last campaign, it was hard to go more than a minute or two without hearing Reid refer to "do-nothing Republicans" or the "do-nothing Republican Congress." At the same time, his fellow Democrats pushed their "Six for '06" agenda, which included a variety of poll-tested initiatives that party strategists felt would be relatively easy for the new majority to pass. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi pledged to do it within 100 legislative hours. Reid couldn't do that, given the slower pace of the Senate. But he did promise action.

It hasn't turned out that way, and Republicans are now trying out the "do-nothing" line on Reid. Playing on last year's theme, they're talking about the "Zero for Seven in '07" Democratic agenda. And it is indeed true that, after an initial flurry of legislative activity, the Democratic Congress has slowed down considerably. On three top areas of Democratic concern--lowering the interest rate on student loans, requiring the government to negotiate lower Medicare prescription-drug prices, and a comprehensive energy policy--the Senate has taken no action at all. On other main Democratic issues on which the House and Senate have both acted--raising the minimum wage, implementing 9/11 Commission recommendations, funding embryonic stem-cell research--Reid and Pelosi have not yet appointed conferees to work on final versions of the bills. Nothing has gotten done.

In addition, Reid has been much quicker on the trigger in using the majority's power to stifle dissent than Republicans before him. As of the end of April, Reid had filed 23 cloture motions, meaning motions to cut off debate. In the comparable period during the last Congress, Republicans had filed just seven such motions. In the Congress before that, after Republicans regained control of the Senate in the 2002 election, Republicans filed just six cloture motions--and almost all were attempts to stop Democratic filibusters of the president's judicial nominations.

"Many of [Reid's cloture motions] happened without negotiation, or very little negotiation," says one key Republican. "It shows a lack of willingness to negotiate. He files them almost immediately upon introduction of a bill."

Of course, Democrats would point to Republicans as the source of the problem. And it's true that if you're in the minority, you can prevent the majority from getting anything done and then condemn them for not doing anything. Reid, of all people, should know that game. But from the get-go, he has run the Senate in a more confrontational way than his GOP predecessors, and he shouldn't be surprised that he has run into opposition.

HIS ETHICS

Like many of his colleagues in the Senate, Reid has done pretty well for himself during his years in government. Last fall, before the election, when word got out that he had violated campaign laws by using $3,300 from his political war chest to give holiday tips to the staff tending his condominium at the Ritz-Carlton in Washington, nobody batted an eye at the accompanying news that Reid bought the condo in the swanky building for $750,000 in cash in 2001. (Reid repaid his campaign fund for the tips and no action was taken against him.) But other Reid real-estate transactions are causing critics to take notice.

In 1998, Reid bought a parcel of land outside Las Vegas for $400,000. It was zoned for residential use, but Reid asked the local government to re-zone it for commercial development. There was a fair amount of disagreement inside the zoning commission, but Reid finally got his way. He sold the land in 2004 for $1.1 million. Reid reported the sale and his $700,000 profit on Senate disclosure forms. But he did not report that, in 2001, three years before the sale, he had transferred ownership of the property to a private corporation that he had formed with a friend named Jay Brown, a lawyer who had sometimes been linked to (although never charged with) shady dealings in the Las Vegas gambling business.

Transferring the land to the corporation allowed Reid to keep his name out of property-tax and other transactions. No one has alleged that Reid committed any crime in the deal, but ethics watchdogs have asked why he wanted to remove his name from the property during the re-zoning negotiations. Reid didn't help things when he abruptly hung up on an Associated Press reporter who tried to ask him about it. And now there is another land deal, this one is Arizona, that is attracting scrutiny after reports that Reid paid a super-low price for residential land owned by a pension fund controlled by a friend.

None of these issues has turned into a serious problem for Reid, at least not yet. But he has been in the majority leader's office for just a few months. Last December, he hired Hollywood lawyer Martin Singer, who has represented such high-profile clients as Britney Spears, Bruce Willis, and Arnold Schwarzenegger, to handle questions about the Vegas land deal--a move that suggests Reid knows those questions aren't going away.

THE RIGHT KIND OF MAJORITY LEADER?

For the last few months, the Wall Street Journal and NBC News have been asking Americans, "Do you think the Democratic Congress has brought the right kind of change to the U.S.?" In January, 42 percent of those polled said yes, the Democrats have brought the right kind of change--as opposed to 15 percent who said Democrats have brought the wrong kind of change and 39 percent who said Democrats have brought no change.

Those numbers have changed dramatically during Reid's first months in power. By late April, just 20 percent said Democrats have brought the right kind of change. But the big news was that 60 percent said Democrats have brought no change at all.

There's no doubt that voters fired the Republican congressional leadership last November. But even Democratic strategists concede that firing Republicans isn't the same as hiring Democrats. That's the question Democrats face in 2008, and in the Senate they will run on their record under a leader who has put his foot in his mouth more times than he can count, who has allied himself with the angry left wing of his party, who has failed to move the Senate in any particular direction, and who has raised doubts about his own ethics.

God knows Republicans will have their problems in the coming campaign. But thanks to Harry Reid, they'll have a fighting chance.