good day to all of you. welcome, everyone, to alex wooit reports. here s what s happening at 2:00 p.m. eastern, 11:00 a.m. pacific time, a memorial service for former nevada senator harry reid is getting under way in las vegas. president biden is there, along with house speaker nancy pelosi and senate majority leader chuck schumer and former president obama will be delivering the eulogy. nbc capitol hill correspondent leigh ann caldwell is also there. leigh ann, set us up for what we can expect this hour. reporter: hey, alex, the service today is going to be the who s who of democratic politics, of course, president joe biden, former president barack obama, speaker pelosi, majority leader schumer in the senate, they re going to speak here but perhaps for the late senator, the most important person who s going to be here is his wife, landra, of 62 years. he kept a poem of e.e. cummingss in his desk to always remember her, titled, i carry your heart out with me. so she was
Women. and so that was really an important part of him that is often a personal side of him that is often left behind because of his legislative accomplishments. but of course he was also very divisive too. he was a shrewd politician, and he, you know, very controversial tenure in the senate, even though he ushered through some of the most consequential pieces of legislation the country has seen, alex. yeah. 100%. and as we just give everyone, again, a look at what we are watching right there, of course, you see president biden and jill biden, our first lady right next to him as we await a musical performance if the program goes according to schedule, be still will be performed by brandon flowers of the killers but then they ll have two more of senator reid s sons, those being reif and rory, before we hear from the senate majority leader currently, chuck schumer, so we re monitoring all this for you. carol, we asked the legacy question always, but with this much depth and breadth
Timber. [ sighs heavily ] when owning a small business gets real, progressive helps protect what you ve built with affordable coverage. we have been following the memorial service under way for former senate majority leader harry reid, and soon we should be hearing from the current senate majority leader chuck schumer followed by house speaker nancy pelosi. then, former president obama. he will deliver the eulogy, and president biden will be giving his remarks as we look right now at one of harry reid s sons, that being key reid, and they are talking about their father in such emotional context. actually, that is josh. key has just wrapped up. that is josh reid. josh was preceded by key, his brother, and his sister, lana, and it really is quite something
Politician, but it was all because he knew how to wield the processes of the senate. he knew how to use politics to advance democratic goals, and so now i think the question that democrats face is, will they pick up where harry reid left off? there are all sorts of questions about, you know, will democrats change the filibuster to push through voting rights legislation? harry reid has called for democrats to do that. of course, it was harry reid who changed the filibuster years ago to make it easier to get through president barack obama s nominations to the court, and since then, i don t think any president has had as many justices or rather federal judges on the bench as barack obama did in that two-year stretch. and harry reid has also called for shaking up the way that the electoral calendar is right now. he didn t want iowa and new hampshire to go first. he wanted states like nevada and south carolina that are more representative of the democratic party to be much higher in that ca
And he helped people who needed help. and i think that s the most important thing that can be said about all right. harry reid. that s a beautiful thing to be said about harry reid. geoff, are there going to be many republicans paying tribute to reid today or next week at the capitol? i mean, when you give the length of his tenure serving in congress, yes, the end of his tenure, he had gotten right into the mix of the extreme partisanship of this country, but he preceded that as well. when you had democrats and republicans working alongside one another across the aisle. that s true, and based on leigh ann s reporting, there are a couple of current republican lawmakers who are there in las vegas to pay their respects and we ll certainly see more next week when the late senator lies in state at the u.s. capitol. i ll tell you, though, i m struck by the written statement that president biden released where he said that harry reid was focused on attaining power not just for power s sak