What was "deeply good" about Harry Reid?

"Few people have done more for this state and this country than this driven, brilliant, sometimes irascible, deeply good man from Searchlight, Nevada."

Said Barack Obama, quoted in the Washington Post account of yesterday's memorial service for Reid.

It's the "deeply" that gets you. It draws so much attention to "good." We might have let it go — was Harry Reid good? — if "deeply" hadn't forced us to stop and stare.

I haven't used my "deeply (the word!)" tag since last May.

Here's the original post — in 2014 — where I created the tag.

There are so many trite usages — deeply in love, deeply disappointed, deeply religious, thinking deeply, deeply troubled, deeply concerned, deeply offended, deeply regret — and "deeply" is deeply embedded in constitutional law doctrine with the phrase "deeply rooted in this nation's history and tradition."

I went back into my own archive to see how I had used it over the years and, funnily enough, the first thing on my list was about something Obama famously said about Kamala Harris:

1. "Beauty is a system of power, deeply rooted, preceding all others, richly rewarded," wrote Garace Franke-Ruta, explaining "Why Obama's 'Best-Looking Attorney General' Comment Was a Gaffe."...

Oh, what's not a gaffe these days? 

But back to the memorial service. Biden and Pelosi spoke too, and both of them told a joke premised on the reputation Reid had for being untalkative. 

Here's Biden joke : "Harry and I both liked to talk a lot... I’m just testing whether you’re asleep yet."

Here's Pelosi's: "He was a man of few words — and he wanted everyone else to be a person of few words."

They kept it light. There was an opportunity to go much lighter on the man-of-few-words theme — man of even fewer words now, ha ha — or to go much more deeply....

But I won't end with the end of Hamlet. I will lighten up and give Chuck Schumer the last word, because who doesn't love kissing and because I have a "saliva" tag that I get a kick out of using:

It was election night 2006, when Democrat Claire McCaskill won her race in Missouri, a victory that gave control of the Senate to Democrats, and Reid rushed over and kissed McCaskill through the television screen.

“His lips remained attached to the TV screen for a full 10 seconds,” Schumer said. “I had to get up and wipe the copious spittle off the TV screen.”

"He was raised in almost Dickensian circumstances in tiny Searchlight, Nev.: His home had no indoor plumbing, his father was an alcoholic miner who eventually died by suicide..."

"... and his mother helped the family survive by taking in laundry from local brothels.... [H]e wielded an irreverent sense of humor, but could be brusque, often not even saying goodbye to colleagues at the end of a phone call.... He deemed President George W. Bush 'a loser' while addressing a group of high school juniors in Nevada in 2005, mused about the body odor of Washington’s tourists a few years later and, when Mr. Obama first ran for president, in 2008, said the country’s first Black president could be elected because he spoke 'with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.'... It was Mr. Reid who saw Mr. Obama’s potential for a successful run at the White House when many Democrats were rallying behind Hillary Clinton.... [H]e sought to undermine Mitt Romney’s presidential candidacy in 2012 by repeatedly, and without evidence, claiming that Mr. Romney had gone a decade without paying income tax. Mr. Reid was even more contemptuous of former President Donald J. Trump, calling him 'a racist' and 'sexual predator' who achieved prominence only because of the fortune he had inherited. Being born into wealth was, of course, alien to Mr. Reid. At the end of his career — after great financial and political success and raising five children, one of whom became an elected official in Las Vegas — he relished showing visitors his dusty hometown.... '[B]e proud of who you are, you can’t escape who you are,' Mr. Reid said in his Senate farewell speech, adding... 'Harry Reid, the guy from Searchlight.'"

From the NYT obituary for Harry Reid.

"It’s the diet version of the N-word, but as an African-American man, it’s something I deal with pretty frequently."

"If there’s a takeaway from the conversation, it is that Roger Stone gave an unvarnished look into what is in the heart of many Americans today."

Said Morris W. O’Kelly (of radio's "Mo’Kelly Show"), quoted in "Roger Stone Uses Racial Slur on Radio Show/Mr. Stone, while being questioned about the commutation of his sentence by President Trump, used a racial slur in referring to his interviewer, who is Black" (NYT).

The "diet version of the N-word" is "Negro," and Stone, in the middle of talking to O'Kelly, muttered something to the side. The beginning of the sentence was hard to make out, but it ended with "arguing with this Negro."

When Mr. O’Kelly asked him to repeat what he said, Mr. Stone let out a sigh, then remained silent for almost 40 seconds. Acting as if the connection had been severed, Mr. Stone vehemently denied that he used the slur. “I did not, you’re out of your mind,” Mr. Stone told the host.

Afterwards, O'Kelly said: “The only thing that I felt was true, honest and sincere that Roger Stone said was in that moment that he thought I was not listening. All of my professional accolades, all my professional bona fides went out the window because as far as he was concerned, he was talking and arguing with a Negro.”

Stone is ludicrously dishonest here. And no one should take solace in the fact that "Negro" was once the polite term. For background, read "When Did the Word Negro Become Taboo?," a 2010 Slate article dealing with a newly released statement Senator Harry Reid had made before the 2008 election, saying Barack Obama could win  because he was "light skinned" and had "no Negro dialect." That was 10 years ago, and people were calling on Reid to resign. I remember when "colored people" was the polite term (and so does the NAACP).

But it hardly even matters here, because even if Stone had muttered "arguing with this black man" or "arguing with this African-American man,"it would have been offensive. Do the interview, answer the questions. If you have a valid reason to object to the interviewer, go ahead and say it, but if your objection is that he's black, you're horribly wrong. Saying "arguing with this black man" is in the category of remarks like "It's like arguing with a 2-year-old" or "It's like talking to a wall." It's disrespectful even if the source of your irritation is not the race of your interlocutor. Add race, and it's a cruel insult. Make the racial word different from the normal words that decent people use in public speech, and you make yourself a pariah.

Stone paused for 40 seconds and denied that he said it. He knew it was wrong. If he knew it was wrong, and it's so obviously wrong, why did he say it? It's his secret thought but it just slipped out, because he lacks brain/mouth control? Or did he actually really want to hurt O'Kelly?

"I do not think that anybody — Bernie Sanders or anyone else — should simply get the nomination because they have 30 percent of the delegates and no one else has that many."

"Let’s say that he has 35 percent. Well, 65 percent he doesn’t have, or that person doesn’t have. I think that we have to let the system work its way out. I do not believe anyone should get the nomination unless they have 50-[percent]-plus-one.... A lot people in the race still, but they’ll be dropping off quick, because the money is running out. So I think you’re going to have the field winnowing fairly quickly. And you have most of the people who are not Bernie Sanders, are people who are moderates, and maybe they’ll work something out to get together and try to find that one person who can come up with the number of delegates. Maybe that’s one way to do it.... I just don’t think you can give the nomination to somebody who has 65 percent of the people that made a different decision."

Said Harry Reid, the former Senate majority leader, from his office at the Bellagio in Las Vegas, quoted in "Harry Reid says Sanders needs more than plurality to win Democratic nomination" (WaPo).

That sounds right to me, but there are times when I think it's becoming so likely that Trump will win that those who are trying to shape the future of the Democratic Party might prefer to let Bernie Sanders take the nomination and then go on to fail and fail big. That way, the left-wing extreme takes the blame, the loss can be massaged into the argument that the socialist move is a proven disaster, and the liberal moderates can reclaim control. If Sanders gets the most votes/delegates going into the convention, but the convention works out a way to give the nomination to someone else, the far left will rage on for another 4 years with a sense of entitlement that it's certainly their turn in 2024. And let's say that convention picks Pete Buttigieg, the shining new talent. Then, he'd be ruined for 2024. Save him. Let him age for 4 years. And give him a clear run at the presidency in 2024, after Trump is gone and after the Democrats prove to themselves that Americans won't vote for left-wing extremism.

"I don't think he's, intellectually, a powerhouse but he is basically a very, very smart man. No matter what the subject..."

"... any argument he involves himself in, it's on his terms. You're always arguing against him. He never, never, is willing to debate an issue on terms that aren't his."

Said Harry Reid, quoted in "Harry Reid warns Democrats: Trump is a 'very, very smart man' who won't be easily beaten in 2020" (CNN).

"He and I had our differences, but no one ever questioned his patriotism. Our battles were strictly political battles."

"There's no question in my mind that George Bush would be Babe Ruth in this league that he's in with Donald Trump in the league. Donald Trump wouldn't make the team."

Said Harry Reid, who is dying but still talking, still striving for the flourish of an analogy.

Quoted at CNN.

ADDED: Donald Trump always hits back, even at a dying man who's only trying to get in his last licks.

Former Senator Harry Reid (he got thrown out) is working hard to put a good spin on his failed career. He led through lies and deception, only to be replaced by another beauty, Cryin’ Chuck Schumer. Some things just never change!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 25, 2019

Harry Reid "does not have long to live. I hate to be so abrupt about this, but Reid probably would not mind."

Writes Mark Leibovich in "Harry Reid Has a Few Words for Washington/The former Senate majority leader on President Trump and Senator Chuck Schumer, and on why he doesn’t regret ending the filibuster for judicial appointment" (NYT Magazine).

In May, he went in for a colonoscopy, the results of which caused concern among his doctors. This led to an M.R.I. that turned up a lesion on Reid’s pancreas: cancer. Reid’s subdued and slightly cold manner, and aggressive anticharisma, have always made him an admirably blunt assessor of situations, including, now, his own: “As soon as you discover you have something on your pancreas, you’re dead.”...

Reid once called the Federal Reserve chairman Alan Greenspan a “political hack,” Justice Clarence Thomas “an embarrassment” and President George W. Bush a “loser” (for which he later apologized) and a “liar” (for which he did not). In 2016, he dismissed Trump as “a big fat guy” who “didn’t win many fights.” Reid himself was more than ready to fight, and fight dirty: “I was always willing to do things that others were not willing to do,” he told me.

During the 2012 presidential campaign, he claimed, with no proof, that Mitt Romney had not paid any taxes over the past decade....

Leibovich asks Reid if he agreed with James Comey's likening of Trump to a mafia boss:

“Organized crime is a business,” he told me, “and they are really good with what they do. But they are better off when things are predictable. In my opinion, they do not do well with chaos. And that’s what we have going with Trump.”

Still, Reid added: “Trump is an interesting person. He is not immoral but is amoral. Amoral is when you shoot someone in the head, it doesn’t make a difference. No conscience.” There was a hint of grudging respect in Reid’s tone, which he seemed to catch and correct. “I think he is without question the worst president we’ve ever had,” he said. “We’ve had some bad ones, and there’s not even a close second to him.” He added: “He’ll lie. He’ll cheat. You can’t reason with him.” Once more, a hint of wonder crept into his voice, as if he was describing a rogue beast on the loose in a jungle that Reid knows well....

Reid takes an anthropological interest in the changes that Trump has wrought on his old institution. “You can’t legislate when you have a chief executive who’s weird, for lack of a better description,” he told me...

I asked him if he could identify at all with Trump’s dark worldview. “I disagree that Trump is a pessimist,” Reid said, as if to allow him that mantle would be paying him an undeserved compliment. “I think he’s a person who is oblivious to the real world.”...

“As has been written since I left,” he told me, “I was kind of a strange guy.”

Also interesting — his relationship with Chuck Schumer:

In our conversation, Reid seemed incapable of not constantly reminding me that he did not wish to talk about Schumer, as if this itself was something he wanted me to emphasize. “I do not call Schumer,” he told me. Then: “I call him once in a while — not weekly. Let’s say monthly I may call him.” This sounded straightforward enough until he added: “I talk to Nancy often. I love Nancy Pelosi. We did so many good things, and we still talk about that.” ...

"Following former Obama administration CIA Director John Brennan on Twitter, we see his animus nakedly on display."

"He is demented by hatred. Is this really the public role a former Director of the CIA is to be playing?... It is easy to forget the critical role played by Brennan in the still mysterious origin of the counterintelligence investigation that culminated in the appointment of Robert Mueller as Special Counsel," writes Scott Johnson at Power Line. He includes a long excerpt from Kim Strassel, including:

Mr. Brennan has taken credit for launching the Trump investigation... [B]y his own testimony, he as an Obama-Clinton partisan was pushing information to the FBI and pressuring it to act.

More notable, Mr. Brennan then took the lead on shaping the narrative that Russia was interfering in the election specifically to help Mr. Trump—which quickly evolved into the Trump-collusion narrative. Team Clinton was eager to make the claim, especially in light of the Democratic National Committee server hack...

The CIA director couldn’t himself go public with his Clinton spin—he lacked the support of the intelligence community and had to be careful not to be seen interfering in U.S. politics. So what to do? He called Harry Reid.... [who then] wrote a letter to Mr. Comey, which of course immediately became public. “The evidence of a direct connection between the Russian government and Donald Trump’s presidential campaign continues to mount,” wrote Mr. Reid, going on to float Team Clinton’s Russians-are-helping-Trump theory. Mr. Reid publicly divulged at least one of the allegations contained in the infamous Steele dossier, insisting that the FBI use “every resource available to investigate this matter.”

The Reid letter marked the first official blast of the Brennan-Clinton collusion narrative into the open....

"Look at that thing! It's rotating!"

"A video shows an encounter between a Navy F/A-18 Super Hornet and an unknown object. It was released by the Defense Department's Advanced Aerospace Threat Identification Program," from "Glowing Auras and ‘Black Money’: The Pentagon’s Mysterious U.F.O. Program" (NYT).

The Defense Department has never before acknowledged the existence of the program, which it says it shut down in 2012.... The shadowy program — parts of it remain classified — began in 2007, and initially it was largely funded at the request of Harry Reid, the Nevada Democrat who was the Senate majority leader at the time and who has long had an interest in space phenomena. Most of the money went to an aerospace research company run by a billionaire entrepreneur and longtime friend of Mr. Reid’s, Robert Bigelow, who is currently working with NASA to produce expandable craft for humans to use in space....

Something screwy is happening.

"Do you think I spend my day wondering about how Chuck Grassley will go down in history?"

"I don’t care if I ever go down in history. I’m here to do a job and how the history books treat me — my name will probably never be mentioned in the history books."

The old what-about-your-legacy move — whipped out by Harry Reid over the Merrick Garland nomination — doesn't work on Chuck Grassley.

Ironically, this is the post that gets me to make a Chuck Grassley tag.

"Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged."

Abraham Lincoln, quoted by Secretary of State Robert Gates in "Duty: Memoirs of a Secretary at War" (p. 60):

The difficulty of extending the surge to September 2007 (when Petraeus would submit his report on progress), much less to the spring of 2008, was underscored by the rhetoric coming from both Republicans and Democrats in Congress. The frequently used line “We support the troops” coupled with “We totally disagree with their mission” cut no ice with people in uniform. Our kids on the front lines were savvy; they would ask me why the politicians didn’t understand that, in the eyes of the troops, support for them and support for their mission were tied together. But the comments that most angered me were those full of defeatism— sending the message to the troops that they couldn’t win and, by implication, were putting their lives on the line for nothing. The worst of these comments came in mid-April from the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid, who said in a press conference, “This war is lost” and “The surge is not accomplishing anything.” I was furious and shared privately with some of my staff a quote from Abraham Lincoln I had written down long before: “Congressmen who willfully take actions during wartime that damage morale and undermine the military are saboteurs and should be arrested, exiled, or hanged.” Needless to say, I never hinted at any such feelings publicly, but I had them nonetheless.

"The Senate opened a rare Sunday night session in a desperate attempt to extend a national security surveillance program... that was on the verge of expiring at midnight."

"Senator Harry Reid, Democrat of Nevada, criticizing Mr. McConnell on the Senate floor, said, 'The majority leader had five months' to fix the problem through committee work. 'Everyone saw this coming,' Mr. Reid, the Senate minority leader, said."

The session quickly became contentious when Senator Rand Paul, the other Kentucky Republican, whom Mr. McConnell has endorsed for president, fought for the right to speak. After being rebuked by Senator John McCain, Republican of Arizona, for not understanding the Senate rules, Mr. Paul railed against the surveillance program. “We should be upset, we should be marching in the streets,” he said.

Mr. Paul seemed determined to use his procedural weapon — the words “I object”...

Now, we know.

Yesterday, I listed 2 "Things it seems we should know by now." The first was "The name of the princess baby." Of course, as already blogged today, we now know the name is Charlotte Elizabeth Diana. The second was "The cause of the death of Sheryl Sandberg's husband. David Goldberg 'died suddenly,' last Friday, at the age of 47." As we discussed in the comments, the lack of information makes people guess that it was a suicide, and it would be significant if the husband of the author of "Lean In" killed himself.

But the husband, David Goldberg, did not kill himself. We learn today that he "died of head trauma... after he collapsed at the gym at a private resort in Mexico":

Mr. Goldberg, 47, was on vacation with family and friends at the Four Seasons Resort near Punta Mita, close to Puerto Vallarta in southwest Mexico, according to a spokesman for the prosecutor’s office in Nayarit State. Mr. Goldberg left his room around 4 p.m. on Friday, collapsed while exercising and died of head trauma and blood loss, said the spokesman. His brother, Robert Goldberg, found him on the floor of the gym at the resort at around 7 p.m., with blood around him. The spokesman said it appears “he fell off the treadmill and cracked his head open.”

This might be interesting to those who are questioning Harry Reid's account of his recent injuries.

"Anyone who saw Reid would say that he looked like he had been beaten up by a guy with a hard left, maybe using brass knuckles..."

"When a guy shows up at a Las Vegas emergency room on New Year’s Day with severe facial injuries and broken ribs, and gives as an explanation the functional equivalent of 'I walked into a doorknob,' it isn’t hard to guess that he ran afoul of mobsters. Yet the national press has studiously averted its eyes from Reid’s condition, and has refused to investigate the cause of his injuries. To my knowledge, every Washington reporter has at least pretended to believe Reid’s story, and none, as far as I can tell, has inquired further."
 
Writes John Hinderaker, who inquires further.

What happened to Reid is not just a matter of curiosity. Everyone knows that the Reid family has gotten rich, even though Reid has spent his entire career as a public employee. It is known that a considerable part of his fortune came from being cut in on sweetheart Las Vegas land deals that included at least one person associated with organized crime as a principal....

"Why don’t they get a life and talk about something else? People deserve better."

From a list in Politico titled "Harry Reid’s insults: 10 greatest hits." That headline makes it sound as though he was some sort of master of the insult, perhaps not an Oscar Wilde, but at least a Don Rickles. But the closest he comes to saying anything striking/offbeat is...

When [George W.] Bush invited Reid for coffee in the Oval Office in the final weeks of his presidency, the president’s dog walked in, and Reid says he insulted the president’s pet. “Your dog is fat,” he said.

Also, this one isn't an insult per se...

“[Reid] was wowed by Obama’s oratorical gifts and believed that the country was ready to embrace a black presidential candidate, especially one such as Obama — a ‘light-skinned’ African-American ‘with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one.’”

... or not an insult to Obama anyway. It is an insult to Americans in general and it's a hurtful statement indirectly aimed at black people.

People do deserve better. 

This Senate seat is lost.

Harry Reid will not seek reelection.

Drudge's Thanksgiving theme: bowed heads.

I love the variety here. In the center column, Harry Reid has a seeming halo above him, and one frame down is the halo of streetlight over the snow in Ferguson. In the left column, the 2-headed Schumer looks devilish, and below him, Putin bows his head down and lifts up his champagne glass. Putin senses victory, while over in the right column, RG3 bows in the defeat of having "Played last game."

At the top of the page is a pumpjack, photographed to look like a hellish robot...



... and the headlines at the top of the columns reinforce a dread of encroaching robots: "Flying robots to start serving in restaurants by end of '15...," and "Scientists on brink of creating artificial life.../Digitize brain of WORM and place inside ROBOT!"

"Undercutting the president’s staff at a time of transition to a new majority is pretty outrageous."

"For Krone to do this and there’s no retribution? Unbelievable."

Said William M. Daley, Obama's former chief of staff, commenting on Harry Reid's top aide, David Krone, in the NYT article "Reid Unapologetic as Aide Steps on Toes, Including Obama’s."

Mr. Krone said he was simply protecting Mr. Reid. A few days before the midterm elections, he said, he was hearing from reporters that the White House was blaming the legislative strategy devised by him and Mr. Reid for the party’s lousy electoral prospects. “I’m going to go meet with these reporters,” Mr. Krone recalled telling Mr. Reid. “And he’s, like, ‘O.K.’ ”....

"I have never seen a president in exactly the position Mr. Obama is, which is essentially alone."

Writes Peggy Noonan in "The Loneliest President Since Nixon/Facing adversity, Obama has no idea how to respond."

He’s got no one with him now. The Republicans don’t like him, for reasons both usual and particular: They have had no good experiences with him. The Democrats don’t like him, for their own reasons plus the election loss.... No one at [his post-election lunch with congressional leaders] looked at him with colder, beadier eyes than outgoing Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, who clearly doesn’t like him at all. The press doesn’t especially like the president; in conversation they evince no residual warmth. This week at the Beijing summit there was no sign the leaders of the world had any particular regard for him....

The last time we saw a president so alone it was Richard Nixon, at the end of his presidency, when the Democrats had turned on him, the press hated him, and the Republicans were fleeing.... But Nixon had one advantage Obama does not: the high regard of the world’s leaders, who found his downfall tragic (such ruin over such a trifling matter) and befuddling (he didn’t keep political prisoners chained up in dungeons, as they did. Why such a fuss?).

How will this shutdown end?

A stalemate in a game that cannot end.

"Once the government reopens and we get the debt ceiling settled, we’ll be happy to talk to them about anything they want to talk about." (Reid.)

"This isn’t some damn game. All we want is to sit down and have a discussion." (Boehner.)

Okay, so it's not a game. But "game" is at least an apt metaphor. Or, no, it's not, because in games, where there is a true stalemate, a rule ends the game, and the players can stop playing. They don't continue to sit at the chessboard until someone concedes.

Talking and having a discussion is also a metaphor. The 2 parties in Congress are not a couple on a date that's turned into a staring contest. Or maybe Boehner is the woman endlessly imploring her man to talk about their relationship, and Reid is the taciturn man who's waiting for her to give up and do what the junior partner in a marriage is supposed to do: what he says.

Alternatively, Boehner is the man who relentlessly pursues his ex-girlfriend asking only for a chance to talk to her, and the woman — Reid — curtly informs him that there's nothing to talk about.

We instinctively turn away. And yet, the 2 sides are, it seems, waiting for Us the People to assign blame to one side or another. We're supposed to decide, and when we've conveyed our feelings, the party that anticipates losing in future elections will cave so our loathing for it doesn't grow any deeper.

But are we still watching? They need us to watch. It's their only way out. They're trying to make it interesting, with war monuments and children dying of cancer, but... look: gigantic hornets are killing the Chinese and Sandra Bullock is floating in outer space!