Molly Ball describes how Sen. Harry Reid spent years engineering the Republican field against him, and got the race he wanted:
The dean of the Nevada political press corps, television host and columnist Jon Ralston, frequently refers to Reid as the state’s “Meddler-in-Chief,” because nearly everything that happens in the Silver State bears his fingerprints. Nowhere has that been more evident than in the race to run against him. It belies the common perception of him as a bumbling, mush-mouthed, accidental leader. By reputation, he is no Lyndon B. Johnson or even Rahm Emanuel: The Washington Post‘s David Broder called him “a continuing embarrassment thanks to his amateurish performance” as majority leader. But the way he’s engineered his current electoral situation shows that Harry Reid is no less a master of the inside game.