Warm and Fuzzy Dingy Harry Plans to 'Vaporize' Senate Opponent

Considering how badly he's already trailing his prospective GOP opponents in head-to-head matchups in 2010, this seems like awfully brash talk from Dingy Harry.

Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid is prepared to run a sharply negative campaign if that’s what it takes to win reelection next year, with a top adviser predicting that the Nevada Democrat will “vaporize” his Republican challengers with attack ads.

Trailing in the polls and under constant attack from the GOP, Reid’s campaign has just launched a warm-and-fuzzy million-dollar ad campaign to reintroduce the veteran senator to his constituents. But Reid’s team also wants to be the one that introduces lesser-known opponents to the electorate — and will be ready, when the time comes, to unleash a torrent of ads branding challengers as untested and unprepared for the job.

Now in the campaign’s sites: Sue Lowden, a wealthy gaming executive, former state senator and former chairwoman of the Nevada Republican Party, and Danny Tarkanian, a Las Vegas businessman and the son of legendary basketball coach Jerry Tarkanian.

“I expect him to vaporize Lowden or Tarkanian or whoever is the opponent,” said a Reid adviser, speaking on the condition of anonymity in order to discuss campaign strategy.

Vaporizing people? Doesn't seems so warm and fuzzy now, does it?

“I think Harry Reid will attempt to savage whoever the nominee is,” said Jamie Fisfis, a top adviser to Tarkanian, a candidate he calls “an outsider” and a “fresh face” for the party.

Dingy Harry Trailing by Double Digits in 2010 Race

Why the long face, Harry? Oh, now I see why.

It's the highest stakes ever for a Nevada election, and former boxer Sen. Harry Reid is on the ropes early. Either Republican Danny Tarkanian or Sue Lowden would knock out Reid in a general election, according to a recent poll of Nevada voters.

The results suggest the Democratic Senate majority leader will have to punch hard and often in order to retain his position as the most accomplished politician in state history, in terms of job status.

Nevadans favored Tarkanian over Reid 49 percent to 38 percent and Lowden over Reid 45 percent to 40 percent, according to the poll.

Reid's status makes him an icon of the Democratic Party and ties him to Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., and President Barack Obama, both of whom are losing ground among centrist and right-leaning voters in the country.

Winning "becomes more difficult when you are actually the one having to carry the water for the president," said Richard Davis, a professor of political science at Brigham Young University in Utah. "He (Reid) has got to get something out of the Obama administration that he can claim as his own."

He's more than welcome to claim any number of Obama's failures. In fact, I wonder if Obama will even be campaigning for Reid, or anyone else for that matter, in 2010, considering his own dwindling fortunes.