Politico does a piece on the different styles of the Democratic US Senate Majority Leaders…..
One from Nevada…
The other from Brooklyn….
Chuck Schumer, now majority leader, was a close personal friend and protege of Reid’s, and their shared leadership of the Senate Democrats over the past 15 years has defined the caucus from top to bottom. For all their similarities and partnerships, the former boxer from small-town Searchlight, Nev., and the chatty pol from Brooklyn each developed their own view of how to run the fractious Democratic Caucus.
While Schumer leads the party with relentless messaging discipline and a focus on lockstep party unity, Reid favored all-out political combat. Sometimes Reid battled members of his own party, but he reveled in partisan bomb-throwing.
Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Reid once notably took to the Senate floor together in 2015 to dispute the tone of a POLITICO story on their relationship, which was scraping rock bottom. But remembering Reid on Tuesday, McConnell put it this way: “When Harry retired from the Senate, we both celebrated the fact that our many differences had never really gotten personal.”
“The nature of Harry’s and my jobs brought us into frequent and sometimes intense conflict over politics and policy. But I never doubted that Harry was always doing what he earnestly, deeply felt was right for Nevada and our country,” McConnell said.
Yet their battles set the stage for today’s tenuous balance of power in a Schumer-led 50-50 Senate, with many Democrats now openly warning that the supermajority threshold’s days are numbered given the difficulty in assembling 60 votes for their party’s priorities like elections reform. Those dominoes began falling after Reid invoked the so-called nuclear option in 2013, eliminating the filibuster on most nominations. It was one of the most consequential decisions made in the Senate this century — and Schumer had Reid’s back….
image….Business Insider