Jon Ralston
speaker
269 appearances
1 recordings
1 series
first heard Jan 2026
last heard 19 Jan
Jon Ralston’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.
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recordings per month · last 12 monthsRecordings per month over the last 12 months — 1 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 1.
Appearances
had some of the same qualities that Reid did, but often wasn't as hamstrung by the rules of the Senate and having to get to 60 votes as Reid was.
But they were partners in this, and he had a phenomenal staff in that war room.
He went out and he started to use the blogosphere just as it was starting in a way that no one else had.
He went out and hired people to staff that as well who knew it.
He would even have them go after what he considered some of his wobbly Senate colleagues and then say, oh, boy, I got to stop that, which was just a classic Harry Reid move.
But he would pull out the stops.
And by the time he was done, there was the short-term game that you mentioned, which is he stopped Social Security privatization.
But he also brought Bush's numbers way down so that in the midterm –
And that's where the parallel might be for today, Rachel, that the Democrats had a smashing win in 2006.
He was, and I really believe this about Harry Reid.
As you mentioned, I covered Reid for a long, long time, but I learned so much more about him to flesh out some of the details of his stratagems and his schemes.
through the research for this book and through his papers, which he granted me access to, which were so revelatory, Rachel, and provided some of the details about that time period and others.
But Harry Reid was a guy who really amassed a tremendous amount of power, and he was going to use every single bit of it to get where he was going.
And he was
a brilliant strategist.
You know, people facetiously talk about Donald Trump playing three-dimensional chess, or maybe some people really think he does.
Harry Reid really, really did.
And he would constantly say to his staff who were demoralized at a bad news cycle or at a legislative loss, don't worry.
We'll get him next time.
And he always had the next steps in mind.
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