In Reelection Fight, Should Reid Speak Softly, Or Carry a Big Stick?

The holiday season may signify the end of the year, but for Sen. Harry Reid, it marks the beginning of a long and enduring fight he’ll be waging into next November. New poll numbers this morning from a Mason-Dixon Poll show the Senate majority leader with a dangerously low state approval rating of just 38 percent. In potential match-ups with both candidates currently vying for the GOP nomination, Reid loses to both.

It would be regular horse-race politics in advance of an election year. Except with Reid, the added layer of complexity is his role as the senate’s presiding member. And more specifically, his role as broker of the health-care debate and the climate legislation that will come next. During an election year, most pols, especially ones entering a tough race, hunker down and work on their image. They toe the line of their state’s public opinion. They sit for interviews that make them glow, and they plant op-eds on populist issues that paint them on the right side of history. Only after they give a victory speech and with a comfortable six years to coast can they return to the nitty-gritty, and the sometimes unpopular decision-making involved in Washington sausage-making.

You can’t blame Reid for not trying. Over the past two months, the Nevada senator has worked on his image, running ads around most of the state. Why is it not working? Reid is not just locked in a bitterly partisan fight over reforming the nation’s health-care system, but to make matters worse, he’s also one of the team captains. Being forced to make clear what he wants, it’s easy for Nevada voters to decide whether they agree. And most don’t. Fifty-two percent of Nevadans oppose the Democrats’ plan for health reform. And if that weren’t enough, he’s also fighting attacks from the other side—progressives pressuring Reid with demands for nothing less than a robust public option.

The fact that one of Nevada’s senators is the majority leader in the Senate is a big deal. His defeat would mean Nevadans would send to Washington a junior senator in the minority party, someone nearly powerless to bring home much bacon. But with health care as the biggest domestic policy issue of the year, it wouldn’t be hard for any challenger, Democrat or Republican, to paint Reid as a problem for Nevadans, not the state’s solution.

In front of Reid stand two options. He could a) cater more to Nevadans, maybe go on a listening tour and use his powerful post to show voters they’d be fools to replace him. Such humility would help him reconnect with his image of a coal miner's son from Searchlight, Nev., fighting on behalf of an oft-ignored state. Or he could b) ignore the polls and plow on, full speed. He would continue to sell a health-care bill that’s unpopular in his state and a cap-and-trade measure that’ll likely be even more unpopular. He’d be working on behalf of the president and the Democratic Party, but such brazenness would be all but an admission of defeat next November—of course not without a somewhat positive legacy of fortitude in the eyes of his liberal colleagues.

What it distills down to is this: should he speak softly, or should he carry a big stick? Teddy Roosevelt made it look easy. From his current spot, Reid won’t be able to do both.