Interesting post. How many daily schedules do you track??

Schumer would certainly be better than Reid. Every time I see Reid on the floor, I just cringe.

I like the delicious possibilities of wingnut reaction to a black crypto-Muslim and a Jew pushing through health care legislation. The placards you’d see might focus people’s minds.

I’m all for it!

See Marcy’s speaking engagement in NYC for The Nation Magazine with Dan Rather and Jane Mayer. http://www.symphonyspace.org

Can they change the majority leader easily and quickly or would this take a lot of time?

Schumer is a lap dog for Wall Street. Kiss any future reforms attempts for the financial system goodbye if he was leader. At least fellow lap dogs Dodd and Frank showed their faces during the meltdown, Chuckie was in hiding. The man won’t even commit to taxing hedge fund managers at fair rates.

AND THE KILLIN’ GOEZ ON AND ON AND…

Citizen emptywheel and the Firepup Freedom fighters:

Thank you again for just bein’ you and posting on this site…unlike most things I pay for these days I feel like I’m gettin’ big bangs for the bucks I been tossin’ toward your work here. As for the implications of the meeting with Obama, I have been waiting patiently for the quiet one from Kenya (that’s a little joke, Sister) to start squeezin’ the Quisling Democrats. As far as Chuck the Bookkeeper is concerned, I don’t trust ‘im at all but he’s one of the few Senators in the last few decades who has the stones and the political skills that LBJ had…unfortunately he seems ta share the same blanket with Rahm Tiny Dancer on many issues and comes from the same wing of the American Likud Party when it comes to Israel. I don’t think that Obama is gunna sell out to Big Pharma or the insurance cabal and his whole approach to governance is to put the issues in the hands of Congress (or the courts) and force ‘em to get the job done…his political skills are not lost from his executive perch and as long as his personal approvals stay at or about 60% the Republicans are irrelevant and the Democrats in the Congress are not gunna be able ta get anythin done that doesn’t satisfy “the boss”. So Shcumer as majority leader sounds mighty good to me, even though he is a slippery SOB.

KEEP THE FAITH AND PASS THE FUCKIN AMMUNITION, BUT MAKE SURE YA KNOW WHAT YER SHOOTIN AT!!

harry reid isnt pro choice. not big on gay rights. schumer is at least pro choice, and backs gay marriage. he and gillibrand plan to do lots on this. i iwsh i could believe this post-but unless reid is pressured very hard by his caucus and obama it will never happen. if healthcare fails bc reid couldnt reign things in then he is in major trouble

I need to seriously recommend that folk get a copy of Robert Caro’s “Master of the Senate” — the third volume in his planned 4 volume bio of LBJ. When you talk about selecting a Senate Leader, you really need to know how that job really functions, and I know of no better graduate course around this topic than Caro’s book. I think it is now in Paperback, but warning — it runs about a thousand pages.

It is totally unimportant whether you ideologically agree with any particular Senate Leader — the stuff about voting patterns is totally useless criteria vis a vis a Senate Leader. What is critical is understanding the factions represented in a particular party in the Senate, and finding the person who can most effectively straddle these, and at the same time keep the Senate moving forward, at least to outward appearances.

Reid was selected not to be a Majority Leader with a ten Senator majority — he was picked to be a Minority Leader after Tom Daschle’s defeat, when we were six Senators down from holding the Majority, and when we didn’t control the House or the Presidency. The qualities called for in one situation are very different from those needed by our current embarassment of Riches that if properly deployed, could pass the whole Damn Democratic Platform. I would suggest that Reid made a huge contribution to getting us into the current position, and he needs to be valued for that. He just may not be the best person to execute Leadership in this new day.

Looking at LBJ as Caro does in such wonderful detail, tells us a lot about the Job. LBJ was also first selected as Assistant Majority Leader when the Democrats were down, did not control the Senate during the first two years of Ike’s term (53-55), and he became an accidental Leader, largely because the Minority Leader was defeated for re-election in 54, and in the wake of the worst of McCarthyism, the Democrats got a new slim Senate Majority. LBJ understood that Ike would never get much support from the Taft faction of the Senate Republicans, so when he became Majority Leader in 55, he straddled the Eisenhower Republicans in the Senate, accepted many parts of Ike’s agenda, and then added that to the slim Democratic Majority, and indeed had on most issues, a comfortable governing coalition with Ike. LBJ also straddled the Democratic Divide — he was the new bright shining hope of the Southern Democrats, who through Seniority controlled all the key committee chairmanships, but he had the ability to present himself as a populist westerner — and it was in that garb that he forged his relationships with the progressive Northern Senators (Hubert Humphrey, Paul Douglass, etc.). He used his position to build the Northern Progressive Faction — just look sometime at who got elected for the first time to the Senate in 1958 with LBJ’s help. All of his working leadership on Great Society stuff — Civil Rights, Civil Liberties, Medicare — it all came from the Class of 1958. And so too did his ability to diminish the hold of the racists on Democratic Party Policy come from this ability to straddle — to keep his own Southern Faction within bounds while he built the coalition that would eventually push them out of the Democratic Party.

Anyhow, that is a sketch of the Job Description of a Majority Leader with a fairly significant party majority — and with conditions that are ripe for passing some major legislation. Does Chuck Schumer fill the bill? I don’t know. I don’t know if he can straddle.

I think it could be an advantage that he is seen as friendly with Wall Street, given that some degree of re-regulation is on the agenda. Far more likely that he can tell the Wall Street boys no on some matters, given that they view him as a friend, than if let’s say he had Bernie Sander’s legislative history. But the job of Majority Leader is to keep Bernie Sanders happy, and pulling the same sled, on the same dog team, as let’s say Mark Pryor or Ben Nelson.

But Read Robert Caro’s book. If you read it once, you’ll read it several more times.

Schumer is just your regular corporatist Establishment Senator. I know we are all desperate for change but Schumer is about as far away from real change as Obama.

How is a Majority Leader chosen? Is it strictly by seniority or do the Senators get to vote on it? And how long does the Majority Leader’s term last?

Why is it that Republicans get to have over-the-top right-wingers in high positions (i.e. Senator McChinless) but the Dems can’t have progressives there?

Just askin’

– Tom