KNIVES ARE OUT: Harry Reid Rips Bumbling Community Organizer Whose Only Skill is Reading a Teleprompter

WaPo's Paul Kane has the details of Harry Reid's temper tantrum. Reid's chief of staff, David Krone, just went public with his six-years-too-late concerns about nominating an inexperienced, back-bencher state senator with a nice logo to the office of POTUS.

Nahanni, can you pass the popcorn, dear?

...tension [inside the Democrat Party] blew up Tuesday when Krone’s comments about Democrats’ dismal showing in the 2014 midterms went public. He accused Obama of paying “lip service” to concerns about helping finance the midterm elections and said the president was an anchor that took down Democrats across the country, costing them the Senate majority.

“The president’s approval rating is barely 40 percent,” Krone said. “What else more is there to say?”

ISIS, Ebola, food stamps and rampant unemployment: what's not to like?

Krone joined Reid’s team as deputy chief of staff, helping guide him through a rocky 2010 reelection, and for the past four years as chief, Krone has channelled Reid. So his comments can reasonably be viewed as Reid’s views of Obama.

Nahanni, pass the butter, please.

Consistently, Senate Democrats felt that they were taking on the most risk as they supported Obama’s $800 billion stimulus plan, the Dodd-Frank rewrite of Wall Street laws and, most of all, the Affordable Care Act. These included a group of senators who first won seats in 2008 and rode into office with Obama. Among them were Mark Begich (Alaska), Kay Hagan (N.C.), Jeanne Shaheen (N.H.), Mark Udall (Colo.) and Mark Warner (Va.).

Oh, now they complain about those bills. What a bunch of hypocritical leftists. But I repeat myself.

Three of those five appear to have lost on Tuesday, and Shaheen and Warner survived only by the narrowest of margins.

Throughout the tough votes, those Democrats enjoyed almost no real relationship with Obama, whose approach to social engagement with lawmakers is almost nonexistent.

Perhaps they should have established a relationship with co-President Jarrett instead.

In the summer of 2011, Obama played a round of golf with House Speaker John A. Boehner (R-Ohio). From there, the duo got close to reaching a massive budget deal that would have raised taxes and cut entitlement programs — slashing at two political sacred cows for Republicans and Democrats.

But Reid’s operation, along with his close ally, Sen. Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.), did not trust Obama’s negotiating skills, and at one point they directly leaked the emerging proposal, timing the release precisely so that the news broke just as Jack Lew, then the director of the Office of Management and Budget, entered a meeting with Senate Democrats.

As aides then recounted, Reid read the news bulletin aloud to a stunned audience of staunch liberals who had protected Social Security and Medicare with their political lives. Reid turned the lectern over to Lew.

The grand bargain, at that point, was essentially dead.

I love the smell of napalm in the morning.


Hat tip: BadBlue News.