Former Democratic Senate leader Harry Reid gave Democrats “at least 60-40” odds of defeating President Trump in November.
Reid, who represented Nevada in the Senate for 30 years, compared Trump with a drunk uncle, telling Vice: “When your uncle who gets drunk all the time gets drunk again, it’s no news at all. I think that’s what we’re all faced with.”
The former senator blasted Trump as “crazy.” He claimed the recent impeachment trial highlighted his dishonesty, but feared it was just background noise to the American people. “[Trump’s] such an uncle who’s in trouble all the time that people kind of accept it. ‘What do we expect?’ That’s the way the impeachment was.”
He gave the Democrats “at least 60-40” odds of beating Trump, but then backtracked to say that his expectations might be “a little generous.”
Reid added: “Any one of our Democratic aspirants can beat him. But it’s not going to be just because we want to beat him. It has to be a well-coordinated campaign where there’s unity. And right now, that’s one of the things that has been so impressive. With all the candidates we’ve had, there has been little backbiting and picking on each other.”
[Read more: Harry Reid calls for Nevada to be first election in 2024: ‘Iowa really was an embarrassment to everybody’]
The race for the Democratic nomination seems wide-open. Former front-runner Joe Biden fizzled in Iowa and New Hampshire while Bernie Sanders soared. Amy Klobuchar and Pete Buttigieg also had strong performances in New Hampshire and Iowa.
Reid claimed that it was “too early to discount” Biden’s campaign. He added: “The campaign for Joe Biden is not over yet. And we have such a false negative — Iowa and New Hampshire. That’s unfair.”
While he didn’t think it was over for Biden, he also claimed it could just be the start of Michael Bloomberg’s success.
“You have to recognize, the man — he really was a good mayor of a huge, huge, city, the largest city in America,” Reid said of the former New York City mayor. “I like him, I’ve always liked him. Nobody’s done more on guns and climate than he has. No one.”
Reid has previously criticized several of the policies Sanders and Elizabeth Warren back, including their support for “Medicare for all” and the decriminalization of illegal border crossings.
