“I believe that my job in my Democratic Caucus is to try to pass legislation. I’m anxious to do it,” Reid said of the new Congress. “I want to do some mainstream things. But I believe that if [Republicans] want to try to do all this crazy stuff, we’re getting out of that stream. … If it’s not mainstream, they’re not going to have us to play with.”
After years of brewing tension with McConnell, along with the White House, Reid will now have to decide whether to side with deal-making Democratic moderates or progressive hard-liners — and early signs are that he plans to do a little of both.
While he said he is “not going to stand in the way” of one key aspect of the White House agenda that he strongly opposes — the administration’s international trade deals — he also blasted another Republican effort that could garner bipartisan support: corporate tax reform, saying “that damn sure isn’t mainstream” and is a “code message for ‘let’s take care of business.’”
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