New Senate Minority Leader

[I spent the winter writing songs about getting better]

The thing with "partial birth abortion" (D&E) is as Vorlon said earlier, it's basically a big GOP scare campaign to win votes. The procedure is very rare, and the ban passed will hardly have any effect since it's pretty much just peformed to save the life of the mother anyway. Still, the public probably wants some restrictions on abortion, I'll admit more than me, and I would be willing to have abortion legal only in the first trimester except for medical reasons afterwords. As a moderate on abortion who probably comes close to the country as a whole, Reid is a good choice.

these are the positions I would want the Democrats to take on the wedge issues:

Abortion: see above
Gay marriage: against an amendment, leave it up to the states, for civil unions
Gun control: same as Howard Dean. Leave it up to the states.