Former President Barack Obama gave the eulogy throughout a memorial service for former Senate Majority Chief Harry Reid on the Smith Heart in Las Vegas on Jan. 8, 2022.
AP Photograph/John Locher
High Democrats flocked to Las Vegas on Saturday for a memorial service to honor Sen. Harry Reid, the celebration’s combative majority chief whose legislative prowess made President Barack Obama’s Inexpensive Care Act a actuality — and whose no-holds-barred partisanship set the stage for in the present day’s bitterly divided Congress.
Obama delivered a heartfelt eulogy for Reid, and President Biden, Senate Majority Chief Chuck Schumer and Speaker of the Home Nancy Pelosi additionally spoke in honor of their longtime colleague.
“He loved each minute of proving doubters unsuitable, repeatedly and once more,” Obama stated of Reid, who he affectionately known as a “pushed, good, generally irascible, deeply good man.”
“In a battle between perfection and progress,” the previous president added pointedly, “Harry all the time selected progress.”
Biden praised Reid’s humility throughout a 19-minute tackle. “Harry was all Searchlight, no highlight,” he stated, evoking the tiny city the place Reid was born.
However the president grew heated as he delved into partisan rhetoric.
“You needed Harry in your nook, and that’s what we should always keep in mind as a nation in the present day,” Biden stated angrily. “Harry knew higher than most how tough democracy is, that the thought of America itself is underneath assault from darkish and deepening forces.”
Reid, 82, died “peacefully” on Dec. 28 surrounded by pals, his spouse Landra Reid introduced. He retired from the Senate in 2017, quickly after he was recognized with pancreatic most cancers.
A string quartet performed solemn hymns and classical choices as company filed into the darkened Smith Heart for the Performing Arts for the invitation-only service.
A big display above the black stage displayed household snapshots and a rotating array of Twitter tributes from Democrats like Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Nevada Sen. Catherine Cortez Masto, Reid’s hand-picked successor.
The gang went silent as a navy honor guard bore Reid’s flag-draped casket into the theater and set it down earlier than the stage.
The service started with a prayer from Reid’s granddaughter Ella Pleasure and tributes from his 5 youngsters, together with a efficiency of “Be Nonetheless” by the Las Vegas-based rock band The Killers, carried out by frontman Brandon Flowers, a longtime household pal.
Born within the mining city of Searchlight, Nev., Reid spent his hardscrabble childhood in a small cabin with out indoor plumbing. He was elected to the US Home of Representatives in 1982 and the Senate in 1984 — finally changing into Nevada’s longest-serving member of Congress.
Because the Senate majority chief between 2006 and 2014, Reid performed a number one position within the passage of the Inexpensive Care Act and the Dodd-Frank Wall Avenue Reform Act through the Obama administration.
However the Senate rule change he instituted in 2013 to ease the affirmation of Obama’s judicial nominees backfired on the Democrats a number of years later, when the Republican-controlled Senate used Reid’s new guidelines to approve tons of of conservative judges nominated by President Trump.
After Saturday’s service, Reid’s stays might be flown to Washington, D.C., the place he'll lie in state within the U.S. Capitol Rotunda Jan. 12 — the primary Nevadan to be so honored.
Post a Comment