I recently had a nice exchange with Dfh1 about the ossified Senate leadership. They have their favorites as a successor to Schumer—Duckworth and Baldwin—and I have mine: Chris Murphy.
As part of the discussion, I stopped to look at the complete roster of Democratic Senators. Many are simply too old for leadership. I love Elizabeth Warren but she’s 76.
Dfh1 and I more or less came to a consensus re qualities needed:
— Understanding the Senate machinery. Which means that while young, means someone who has been around more than six years. I loathe Mitch McConnell but he understood the Senate machinery very very well.
— The ability to herd cats and work with consensus. A temperamental quality. E,g., Rand Paul would never become Senate leader on the Republican side.
— Widely respected by colleagues. Kirsten Gillibrand would never make it. Barbara Boxer would have never made it when she was younger.
— Are they willing to do it. This isn’t as straightforward as you might think. Many on the Senate who are chairs of Committees are loath to give up being the go-to person in their policy areas. Becoming a Leader is like becoming a Dean in academia: lots of prestige, lots of influence, but you give up doing your own research.
The realistic choices are few. Someone new isn’t going to be elected to the Senate and be vaulted into the leadership. Murphy, Duckworth, Baldwin, and Warnock (another of Dfh1’s preferences) are the small pool who meet the criteria and I don’t know about any disqualifying factors they may have. N.B., thank goodness that Dick Durbin is retiring. Yuck. But this brings a moment of opportunity.
Which brings me to the need for generational turnover. For one in particular. A connection who possibly has better tabs on the Senate than I do* and who lives in Massachusetts, was recently polled. They understand polling pretty damned well and they realized that the poll was testing the competitiveness of two potential challengers to Ed Markey. As Artie Johnson would say, for those of you who are old enough to remember, Ver-r-r-r-y interesting.
Along with Durbin (IL) also Peters (MI), and Shaheen (NH) are retiring. I think Reed (Rhode Island) *should* retire. I’m not looking any further ahead than those up in 2026. One election at a time.
*My connection agreed with me about Chris Murphy as a choice. Could see Duckworth or Warnock as well. But I was really interested in the sonar pings re a challenger for Markey.
