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I’ve been hearing from people in and out of the political world saying things like this: folks like Dick Durbin really need to retire. Yes, I’m talking about his Sunday show appearance yesterday and his commenting on the Biden classified documents. What I’m describing here isn’t only about Dick Durbin. But he is one of the prime offenders.
What is Dick Durbin doing in the Senate exactly? What I’ve seen from him, know of him mostly for years is appearances like that on the Sunday shows, ones which play to the D.C. press and establishment opinion. It’s of a piece with Durbin’s position or really non-position on “Roe and Reform.” Durbin was one of the prime holdouts. Well, he wasn’t even a holdout really — he simply wouldn’t discuss it at all. The best he could manage in mid-2022 were some vague comments about not being over-hasty about things.
Others would point out that Durbin is the Majority Whip in the Senate, essentially the deputy leader. He’s also Judiciary Committee Chair. Those gigs certainly take some time and effort. But there are certainly others who could take on those tasks. It’s another instance of SenateBrain, an issue we’ve discussed before — the idea that senators really work in a rarefied institution that is a bit beyond the understanding of ordinary political mortals, that conventional politics and the power they hold at the behest of Democratic voters is secondary to the work they do in the Senate which is beyond our understanding.
It’s not that I expect every senator to be a fulminating partisan. But I do expect that in a moment when the press is pushing a feeding frenzy over an overhyped issue about a Democratic President that they won’t make comments that are obviously going to contribute to that frenzy. That’s not a big ask. The questions aren’t unexpected.
It’s not a lack of preparation really. What we see from the likes of Durbin and more than a few others is a consistent tendency to burnish their own reputation among D.C. opinion makers rather than advance a set of policies, values and political goals voters elected them to advance.
It’s a safe seat. He should retire.
