Reid shares the playbook

After Sen. Harry Reid won re-election last fall over Tea Party Republican challenger Sharron Angle, he brought his campaign playbook and a handful of his political staff back to Washington and installed both in a reorganized communications "war room."

Strains of the Reid campaign operation are evident now and then in the wordsmithing and quick response strategy of Senate Democrats engaged in rhetorical combat with Republicans this spring over federal spending and budget deficits.

On Monday, a Democratic event was staged in the style of a campaign stop. Held in a Senate auditorium, it simultaneously touted the benefits of Social Security and sought to paint Republicans as bad guys for floating possible changes.

Against a blue curtain backdrop, Wade Henderson, president of the Leadership Conference on Civil and Human Rights, provided a stem-winding warmup to a receptive audience composed mostly of senior citizens and union members gathered by Social Security advocacy groups. Eight speakers, including a disabled veterans, a gay rights advocate, a Social Security worker, a registered nurse and a small business owner, gave testimony as to how they depend on benefits -- all leading up to an entrance by Reid from stage right.

After the Senate majority leader was introduced to raucous applause, he took the microphone and in turn called to the stage -- one by one to loud ovations -- Sens. Tom Harkin of Iowa, Bernie Sanders of Vermont, Al Franken of Minnesota and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

Each delivered crowd-pleasing remarks and in the end, the event was deemed a success.

On Tuesday, Sen. Chuck Schumer, D-N.Y., pulled the curtain back a bit further on Democrats' strategizing that heralded back to the fall campaign in Nevada, when "Team Reid" branded Angle as "extreme" and "dangerous" in a steady drumbeat of press releases and statements, and remarks by surrogates.

First reported by the New York Times, Schumer was preparing for a conference call with reporters unaware that his phone was live. Also on the call were Democrat Sens. Barbara Boxer of California, Ben Cardin of Maryland, Tom Carper of Delaware and Richard Blumenthal of Connecticut.

Schumer instructed the senators to portray House Speaker John Boehner as a captive of the Tea Party, and to describe Republican spending cuts as "extreme."

“I always use the word extreme,” Schumer told the senators, according to the newspaper. “That is what the caucus instructed me to use this week.”

When the press conference began, the Democrats were "right on message," the Times reported.

“We are urging Mr. Boehner to abandon the extreme right wing,” Boxer said.

Carper said Republicans had "right-wing extremist friends."

Cardin said Boehner was caving to "extremes of his party.

Blumenthal referenced conservative Republicans as a "relatively small extreme group of idealogues."