Harry Reid’s 2010 burden — the ‘left’, the ‘right’, and the ‘center’

The Complete Las Vegas once again put his finger on the salient issues that face Nevada's senior senator, Harry Reid, as he enters the election year that may mark the last winter of his political career.

Newsweek's Katie Connolly also writes about some of the same issues in Monday's edition of the news weekly. She questions whether Sen. Reid's duties as majority leader saw against him with voters in Nevada. It is a worthy read, though I doubt regular readers of this blog will find anything new.

A more interesting angle comes from an earlier piece by Connolly in which she raised the question of whether Reid will garner the die-hard support of progressive liberals on the issue of the public option in his health care "reform" bill. Click on the video below in which the left wing of the Democratic Party ask whether "Harry Reid is strong enough?"

I am sure that pundits will be tempted to begin 2010 with the theme that Harry Reid is getting it from both extremes -- the right and the left -- as he works to craft legislative compromises to satisfy the middle.

That would be a bad analysis. Harry Reid has pretty much alienated everybody in Nevada -- left, right and the center. He begins the run of this fifth term in the unenviable position of having to convince all parts of the political spectrum that he is worthy of re-election.