What if Harry Reid loses next year?

“You’ve got people who ask, ‘What does Harry actually do around here?’ I say, ‘Just wait till he’s gone. You’ll see just what he did; how he held things together,’” says a Democratic insider with ties to the leader. “On the surface, it appears that all these guys have friendly relationships. But under the surface, there are people who really don’t like each other in the conference, and Harry keeps a lid on all of that.”…

The two men who would almost certainly battle to succeed Reid — Sens. Dick Durbin of Illinois and Chuck Schumer of New York — are both more liberal and more forcefully partisan figures who would alter the Senate’s equilibrium in significant and unpredictable ways.