Harry Reid says the Democratic Party is perfectly fine and would have won without Jim Comey

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Outgoing Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) said in an interview with Politico published Thursday that his party's thorough election rout is not due to anything the Democrats themselves did wrong. Rather, he said, the loss should be blamed on campaign finance law, the Koch brothers, and especially FBI Director James Comey.

"They have Trump, I understand that. But I don't think the Democratic Party is in that big of trouble," Reid told Politico, rejecting any suggestion that his party must do some serious soul-searching. "I mean, if Comey kept his mouth shut [about Hillary Clinton's email investigation in the final days before the vote], we would have picked up a couple more Senate seats and we probably would have elected Hillary." Clinton herself has made the same argument about Comey's role in the election.

In the same interview, Reid said his decision to lead Senate Democrats in going "nuclear" on the filibuster for most judicial nominations may be one of his greatest achievements, and he happily predicted the total demise of the filibuster in the near future. "You can't have a democracy decided by 60 out of 100," Reid said, "and that's why changing the rules is one of the best things that has happened to America in a long time." Though some have predicted Senate Republicans will abolish the filibuster entirely this coming year to cement their multi-branch power, GOP lawmakers have so far expressed little enthusiasm for the idea.

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Reid's farewell speech after more than three decades in Washington is scheduled for Thursday.

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Bonnie Kristian was a deputy editor and acting editor-in-chief of TheWeek.com. She is a columnist at Christianity Today and author of Untrustworthy: The Knowledge Crisis Breaking Our Brains, Polluting Our Politics, and Corrupting Christian Community (forthcoming 2022) and A Flexible Faith: Rethinking What It Means to Follow Jesus Today (2018). Her writing has also appeared at Time Magazine, CNN, USA Today, Newsweek, the Los Angeles Times, and The American Conservative, among other outlets.