The story of the day…..will not be that the US is dangerously close to yet another conflict in the Middle East…….or that the battle for Tikrit is getting weirder and weirder……..nope none of that will matter….the gigantic news is that Harry Reid will not go for re-election in 2016……

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid announced this morning he won’t be seeking re-election in 2016, the New York Times reports. The Nevada senator, who reveals he’s been thinking about retiring “for months,” per the Times, says he’s not ending his nearly 30 years in the Senate because he lost his seat as majority leader in November or because of the injuries he suffered during a Jan. 1 exercise session. But in a press release titled “Thank You,” he acknowledges that the “accident has caused us for the first time to have a little down time. I have had time to ponder and to think.” And the result of that thinking was the determination that it’s time to go. “I want to be able to go out at the top of my game,” he tells the Times. “I don’t want to be a 42-year-old trying to become a designated hitter.”

He also acknowledged he doesn’t want to siphon campaign funds that could be used to help Democrats in hotly contested states take back Senate control from the GOP. “I think it is unfair for me to be soaking up all the money to be re-elected with what we are doing in Maryland, in Pennsylvania, in Missouri, in Florida,” he tells the paper. “These are big, expensive states.” Not that Reid plans on simply coasting by during his lame-duck period. “My friend, Senator McConnell, don’t be too elated. I am going to be here for 22 months, and you know what I’m going to be doing? The same thing I’ve done since I first came to the Senate,” he says in the release.

What will the Dems do without their fearless leader?

Unless Dick Durbin makes a stink about it, it appears that Chuck Schumer will replace Harry Reid as the Senate’s Democratic leader come 2016. In an interview after announcing that he would not run for re-election, Reid tells the Washington Post that the New York senator is his pick. “I think Schumer should be able to succeed me,” he says. Schumer is currently the No. 3 Democrat, with Illinois’ Durbin ahead of him as minority whip. But Reid spoke to Durbin today by phone and tells the Post that Durbin will step aside for Schumer.

Neither Schumer nor Durbin has made an official comment on succession plans, but Schumer’s team has long made it known that he would try to replace Reid whenever he stepped down, reports the Hill. One other name being mentioned frequently as a contender is the fourth-ranking Democrat, Patty Murray of Washington state. Even before Reid’s endorsement, however, Schumer was the heavy favorite, notes the Hill.

Oh goody…..a Clinton Dem will lead the Congress……it is NO secret that I do not approve of much that Reid has done….but at least he had the guts to do it….does anyone really think that Schumer has those guts?

I do not….I see him going back to the Blue Dog politics of Clinton…..if so the poor will suffer the most just like they did under Bubba……..

Any thoughts?