Vox Sentences: Harry Reid's legacy

1. By Bye Harry

Harry Reid demonstrates the "okay" emoji. (Win McNamee / Getty Images)

• Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) will not seek reelection.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• Reid, 75, faced a tough reelection fight in 2016 and recently suffered a severe eye injury, which he claims didn't influence his decision.

  [YouTube / Harry Reid]

• He served as majority leader for eight years, from 2007 to this past January, and was a major reason why President Obama's major legislative accomplishments, from the Affordable Care Act to Dodd-Frank to the stimulus, made it through the Senate.

  [Vox / Ezra Klein]

• One factor in that success: he worked hard to keep and recruit people to the Democratic caucus, wooing Arlen Specter in 2009 and making sure Joe Lieberman wasn't kicked out for endorsing John McCain in 2008.

• Sam Stein nails Reid's significance: he is "one of the great tacticians in modern Senate history, someone who combined a mastery of the rules and a keen recognition of the country’s ideological drift to become one of the most influential political figures of the past six years, second only to President Barack Obama."

  [Huffington Post / Sam Stein]

• He had a long career in Nevada politics before being elected to the Senate in 1986; when he was gaming commissioner, he once choked a man who tried to bribe him during an FBI sting operation.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• He was important to Obama's rise to the presidency, telling him to run in early 2007, while remaining officially neutral between him and Hillary Clinton.

  [Washington Post / Chris Cillizza]

• Initially a defender of the filibuster — particularly while minority leader in 2005 — Reid came around to the views of reformers like Sens. Tom Udall (D-NM) and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) and oversaw the abolition of the filibuster for most presidential nominations.

  [Washington Post / Paul Kane]

• Nevada Attorney General Catherine Cortez Masto is believed to be Reid's preferred candidate to take his Senate seat.

  [Reno Gazette-Journal / Jon Ralston]

• It appears that Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY) is a lock to succeed Reid as Senate Democratic leader; Reid endorsed him, as did Minority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL), Schumer's most plausible rival for the job.

  [Vox / Andrew Prokop]

• Don't expect Schumer to change much; party leaders tend to reflect the average party member's views rather than their own (case in point: Reid is anti-abortion but has fought for abortion rights as leader).

  [Vox / Matt Yglesias]

2. Kleiner clear

Ellen Pao. (Justin Sullivan / Getty Images)

• Ellen Pao, the interim CEO of Reddit, appears to have lost a landmark gender discrimination case against her former employer Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers, the most prominent venture capital firm in Silicon Valley.

  [The Verge / Nitasha Tiku]

• The jury concluded that Kleiner Perkins a) didn't fail to promote Pao because of her gender, b) took reasonable steps to help her, and c) tried to prevent gender discrimination targeting her.

  [ABC News / Susanna Kim]

• It has yet to determine if the firm retaliated against Pao for raising these allegations; eight jurors appeared to think it didn't, but nine are needed to reject her claim.

• The case was closely watched because Pao's claims centered on less obvious forms of gender discrimination — like being told "she didn’t speak up enough and was too passive — but also that she spoke up too much and was pushy and entitled."

  [NYT / Claire Cain Miller]

• There are definitely more blatantly awful actions Pao alleged, like a partner giving her "a book of sexual poetry and nude sketches."

  [recode / Nellie Bowles and Liz Gannes]

• She also claims that a partner told her, after she wasn't invited to a dinner party at the condo of Al Gore — also a Kleiner Perkins partner — that it was because women "kill the buzz."

  [recode / Nellie Bowles and Liz Gannes]

• The defense argued that Kleiner Perkins is competitive, not sexist, and that when Pao realized she couldn't cut it she manufactured a discrimination claim.

  [The Verge / Nitasha Tiku]

• Regardless of the verdict, institutional sexism is a real, pervasive problem in Silicon Valley.

  [Newsweek / Nina Burleigh]

3. Freedom for some, arbitrary firings for others

Mike Pence looks like he just wants this to be over. (Bill Clark/CQ Roll Call)

• Gov. Mike Pence (R-IN) has signed into law a "religious freedom" bill that could serve to protect Indiana employers who discriminate against LGBT employees.

  [AP]

• The law bans state and local governments from "substantially burdening" a person's exercise of religion without a compelling government interest in doing so.

  [NPR / Scott Neuman]

• On its own, that doesn't sound bad, but "supporters of the law say it will keep government entities from forcing business owners — such as bakeries and florists who don’t want to provide services to gay couples — from acting in ways contrary to strongly held religious beliefs."

  [Reuters / Mary Wisniewski]

• A number of similar laws have passed in other states, and only 19 states have laws protecting LGBT people from employment discrimination (some of which don't protect trans people).

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• The law has sparked widespread calls for an anti-Indiana boycott, much as Arizona's 2010 immigration law sparked a boycott against that state.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Hillary Clinton and openly gay Apple CEO Tim Cook have come out against the law, and Salesforce, a company with a big Indiana presence, canceled all company events there.

  [NYT / Michael Barbaro and Erik Eckholm]

• Pence: "This bill is not about discrimination, and if I thought it legalized discrimination, I would have vetoed it."

  [Indianapolis Star / Tony Cook]

4. Misc.

• President Obama's interview with David Simon is both a revealing discussion of the war on drugs and a reminder that Obama is the world's biggest The Wire fanboy.

  [Vox / German Lopez]

• Norway's prisons are far less brutal than America's, and their recidivism rates are no higher. Here's how it works.

  [NYT / Jessica Benko]

• This is a surprisingly compelling defense of the moral philosophy chops of Duck Dynasty's Phil Robertson.

  [Slate Star Codex / Scott Alexander]

• In 2014, Google accounted for 31 percent of all digital advertising revenue, and Facebook accounted for 8. The entire rest of the internet only got 61 percent.

  [WSJ / Rolfe Winkler]

• Is inequality weakening marriage? Or are weaker marriages contributing to inequality?

  [NYT / Ross Douthat]

5. Verbatim

• "You don’t want to be the guy who actually buys a Ferrari, and then everyone is looking at you like, 'I can’t believe you did that.' At the same time, you don’t want to not know what it is to drive one."

  [Facebook executive Stan Chudnovsky to NYT / Farhad Manjoo]

• "Things have to get bad — really bad, like singing-about-racism bad — for fraternities to get kicked out of their on-campus houses or to lose affiliation with their universities."

  [Vox / Libby Nelson]

• "The similarities between Texas Senator Ted Cruz and 16th-century astronomer Galileo Galilei are remarkable, according to Cruz."

  [Bloomberg / Ben Brody]

• "I’ve been on the show for more of my life than I haven’t. It hasn’t settled in yet that it’s over."

  [Mad Men's Kiernan Shipka to NYT / Philip Galanes]

• "The Way the World Works is a novel argument that the entire history of the world can be explained by changes of tax rates. The fall of the Roman Empire, the rise of the Nazis — Wanniski attempts to explain it all as a result of taxes. It is a work of genuine derangement."

  [NY Mag / Jonathan Chait]

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