That's the only conclusion a reader could come to from the latest hit piece on him from Michael Duffy of Time Magazine.
Language matters. You don't need to make up facts to assassinate someone in print. Angle and tone will do the job more quickly.
I mean, how am I supposed to read this in any other way than to understand Harry Reid to be stupid,
The details of Reid's resolution are fuzzy because the Democratic leadership only just glommed onto this idea last week
and a failure,
Reid is expected to unveil the resolution on Tuesday.
But it's hard to see how this is going to fly.
and lacking in leadership,
It's not certain that Reid can come up with wording that will unify his own caucus.
a tool of the angry left,
An aide to a more conservative Senator, who doesn't like what's going on in Iraq but is not willing to oppose the President, was more pointed. "They are all trying to figure out a way to embarrass the President and rally the netroots," he said. "It won't get very far."
a dead-ender with few to no options,
But as politically flawed as the idea was, it began to look good to Democrats when all the alternatives began to look worse.
and finally, a craven opportunist, who uses our men and women in uniform to score cheap political points.
Even if Republicans are right and the Democrats' tactic is doomed, success may not be Reid's goal. Democrats (and Republicans) across Washington have been buzzing for days about the increasingly lopsided poll ratings on Bush and the war — numbers that have led Democrats to conclude that there is simply no downside to bringing up vote after vote on the war in order to force Republicans to choose which side of Bush and Iraq they are on.
Which means Reid' s goal isn't really to legislate a new direction in Iraq at all.
And we wonder why it is so hard to get Democrats elected.
Media Matters reminded me that this is the same Michael Duffy who said the day after the elections that Republicans lost because of "spending like drunken Democrats".
They also remind me that you can make your feelings known about Mr. Duffy's prose style at this email address: letters@time.com.