DEMOCRATS HAVE NO BENCH, PART MCMLXXVII

Harry Reid says he won't run for reelection in 2016 -- but hey, Reid had a tough reelection fight in 2010, so maybe that will actually make it easier for Democrats to defend the seat! That's what Dave Weigel is thinking:

Reid's decision, like the 2010 retirement of Connecticut Senator Chris Dodd, may create one of the rare cases in which an open seat is easier for a party to defend than the incumbent. Nevada has been swinging strongly Democratic in presidential years, as the party's machinery turns out Hispanic votes and wins by landslide margins in Clark County, which includes Las Vegas. Barack Obama won the state twice; even John Kerry had strongly competed for it, losing by only 2.6 percentage points....

Sounds good, I guess. So who's the bright light in the party who'll take the torch from Reid?

Reid's preferred successor is rumored to be Catherine Cortez Masto, the attorney general who'd been term-limited out of office in 2014. It's exceedingly unlikely that Reid, who never lost his grip on his political operation, would have made this announcement without some assurance that Masto or another strong Democrat would run to replace him.

Strong Democrat? Really? Um, nobody's polled Cortez Masto since 2012, but the last time someone did (Public Policy Polling), the numbers weren't great:

Q5 Do you have a favorable or unfavorable opinion of Catherine Cortez Masto?
Favorable........................................................ 24%
Unfavorable .................................................... 22%
Not sure .......................................................... 53%

* * * *

Q7 If the candidates for Governor in 2014 were Republican Brian Sandoval and Democrat Catherine Cortez Masto, who would you vote for?
Brian Sandoval ............................................... 51%
Catherine Cortez-Masto.................................. 33%
Not sure .......................................................... 16%

That's the rising star who's going to hold the seat for the Democrats? Oh, terrific.

By the way, that 57% "Not sure" number came after Cortez Masto had been office for five and a half years. (By the time of the election, she'll have been out of office for nearly two years.)

Maybe I'm misreading the situation from my vantage point at the opposite end of the country, but here's my usual lament: Why don't Democrats have any stars? What's their problem?