I think I see Harry down there near Cairo...............
Posted on 12/10/2014 7:27:47 AM PST by SeekAndFind
What lessons has Harry Reid learned from not one but two midterm wave elections that crushed his party and (finally) booted him into the Senate minority? Not much, it seems. Reid tells Jeremy Peters in a New York Times profile that the American people agree with Democrats on the issues, despite what the polls and two elections have made very clear to practically everyone else. If it hadn’t been for those darned kids at HHS, Reid would have gotten away with another election cycle, dagnabbit (via TWS):
Mr. Reid’s remarks, which he made in an interview from his suite just off the Senate chamber (the door outside will say “Office of the Majority Leader” for another few weeks), reflected a hardening sense within the Democratic Party that voters still supported its positions on issues like raising the minimum wage, college affordability and women’s rights. But Mr. Reid and his fellow Democrats also believe that they did a poor job of communicating their policies in a way that gave voters a reason to look past the deepening dysfunction in Washington.
He acknowledged that he thought Democrats had been in pretty good shape until just a few days before the election. “Things went south quickly,” he said. “But we always thought we had issues on our side.”
In hindsight, Mr. Reid said, it was easier to see how damaging the mismanaged rollout of the Affordable Care Act exchanges had been. “We never recovered from the rollout because the election became one that was directed toward the president. We couldn’t overcome that,” he said. Still, he added, “I should have seen it coming.”
The level of denial here is staggering, but not terribly surprising. The midterms had been running off the rails for Democrats for months, not just “a few days before the election.” True, some of the polling had a couple of races close, such as in Kansas and Georgia, but that turned out to be bad polling, not reality. There was no late-arising turnout surge that changed the dynamics of those elections — just the same ticked-off voters who turned out in 2010, too.
Blaming the massive defeat on the rollout would be akin to blaming the darkness for the Titanic’s sinking. Sure, it was a contributing factor, but the actual cause was steaming at full speed into an iceberg. Chuck Schumer at least grasped that much in his post-mortem a few days after the election (as did Tom Harkin, while missing the larger point). The rollout exposed the incompetence of the Obama administration, but the iceberg in this case was ObamaCare itself, which has always been unpopular with voters. Democrats seized their one moment of having unchallengeable control of Washington DC to shove that down voters’ throats rather than work on immigration or real economic and tax reforms that could have made the recovery something more than Stagnation Lite for five years.
Yeah, Reid should have seen it coming. Practically everyone else did. The only question was the extent of the wave, not the fact that Democrats were about to get buried.
As for the rest of the profile, Peters does a pretty good job of (unintentionally?) showing a politician long past his expiration date. Reid’s bitterness consumes him, and Peters eggs it on a bit himself in his description of a post-election mutiny within Reid’s caucus. He describes six Senate Democrats who refused to vote for Reid as “irascible,” which seems rather ironic after getting that far into the profile of Reid. The soon-to-be Minority Leader pledges to be obstructionist, sneers at the six who voted against him for the position, and in general doesn’t have a kind word for anyone but himself. Reid has collapsed into a caricature of petulance and selfishness, and it’s not clear that either he or Peters realizes it. He’s only a purloined bank deposit away from being Mr. Potter in It’s A Wonderful Life.
I think I see Harry down there near Cairo...............
Liberals never believe that what they are doing is wrong. They only believe that they haven’t been allowed to do enough of it.
- Jim Quinn
Excuses only satisfy those who make them.
What can you expect from a guy who has the IQ of a doughnut.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R7mRSI8yWwg
True - Reid and most in the liberal MSM...
Rustler Reid is dead?
The corollary of that is every problem caused by liberalism can be solved with more liberalism.
ObamunistCare IS an issue, you moron.
Notice ... it’s just the ‘rollout’ and not the POS ACA itself.
Really, Harry!!??
It could have been a perfect and seamless model of cyber enrollment and STIL bee a POS!
That is a grave insult to Doughnuts everywhere. Shame!!!
Ok. I'll bite. Harry Reid is not a true liberal in the sense that he is a true believer. He is the sociopathic politician that is drawn to the Dem leadership who understands the true believers as critically flawed in character.
The true believer lives in a utopian bubble of characters, among these are the victim, the victimizer and the hero/champion/clarion-of-injustice. Reid understands that if he plays the role of hero, he will retain his place at the front of line of the true believers. Or, when the hero fails to deliver, he assumes the role of victim, for the time being.
Here we have a hero of liberal causes being relegated to the victim role, majority leader to minority leader. The victim laments the reason of his defeat being the "method" of the righteous cause, Obamacare rollout, rather than the actual righteous cause, Obama's policies including Obamacare.
Thus, the so-called hero is redeemed because he feints his solidarity to the righteous cause and assumes the pity of the true believers in his victim status. Reid is pandering to the true believers. It is a manipulation and he cares not what the Republicans, the victimizers, think.
Democrat = Obstructionist
These videos need to be seen by one and all.
Gruber falling on his sword.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EZRpVEYo0bI
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bMb3gn3YunE&feature=youtu.be
Must watch to the end:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x2WpS5Pfs4Y
-—they did a poor job of communicating-—
It can be argued the Democrats did not communicate at all. That is especially true of Barack Obama.
The Democrats propagandized. Even women who’s only reason for being is to “make a difference” understood the incessant lies. Losing them lost the election.
This is rich coming from the crook that bought Senators votes for this montrosity.
Smoking some really good shit! huh Harry?
...or that they didn't do a good enough job of explaining it...
...or that we're too "stupid" to understand how good it is for us.
Harry, Obamacare WAS the issue!
Harry Reid; it’s those damned stupid voters again, they think we democrats are trying to screw them over.
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