Durbin's departure stirs a scramble amid a new generation

As President Trump's polling takes a tumble 100 days into his second term — and Dick Durbin, the Senate's second-ranking Democrat, announces his retirement, a very old hit tune by Ethel Waters comes to mind: "There'll be some changes made.

- Clarence Page Tribune Content Agency

I'm gonna change my way of livin', and that ain't no bluff

Why, I'm thinkin' about changin' the way I gotta strut my stuff

Because nobody wants you when you're old and gray There's gonna be some changes made today...

Oh, really? Democrats have been grappling with their own version of that resolution, especially ever since the disastrous defeat of their party’s presidential candidate, Kamala Harris, in November.

"If you’re honest about yourself and your reputation, you want to leave when you can still walk out the front door and not be carried out the black door,” said Durbin, the top Democrat on the Senate's powerful Judiciary Committee, after three decades in the upper body.

The “Biden Effect” is the label Rutgers University political scientist Ross Baker applied to the wave of goodbyes now rolling through the Senate as some longtime stalwarts show signs of getting too long in the tooth.

Having covered Durbin numerous times during his tenure, I’ll miss him. He had a masterful command of the issues, whether I agreed with him or not, and I often learned a lot from him — which is more than I can say for a lot of other lawmakers in the Machiavellian mud wrestling that too often gets in the way of the government's ability to help real people with real problems.