Last year there was a lot of talk that Clinton might forgo the presidential race and instead concentrate on replacing Harry Reid as Senate majority leader. Now it seems she has created so many enemies in the Senate during the primaries that those chances are null. With the famous Clinton trait of holding grudges, it's likely that her future in the Senate will be hindered by bad feelings with the likes of Dodd, Durbin, McCaskill, and many others. As 36th-ranking Democratic Senator out of 49 and no important chairmanship, she may find herself on the short end of those grudge matches.
The New York Times today looks at how disappointing her return to the Senate will be:
http://www.nytimes.com/...
But the seniority arithmetic is only the beginning. There is also the personal challenge of returning to a club where more Democratic members, some quite pointedly, favored Senator Barack Obama and spurned her. For Mrs. Clinton, who has spent years cultivating friendships and raising money for colleagues, that had to hurt. Though the Senate is a place where rival lawmakers daily work side-by-side, this family feud was more public and pronounced than usual.
"You haven’t seen this before," said Bob Kerrey, a former Democratic senator from Nebraska who sought the presidency in 1992 only to return to the Senate after the nomination slipped away. "In politics, what goes around, comes around.
The article goes on to quote some as saying that the way to work herself back into the good graces of fellow Senators is by hard work.
However, in her years in the Senate most of the bills she's gotten passed were for naming courthouses, post offices and honors for individuals. While she may be a fighter and a fierce campaigner, she's not much of a workaholic.