Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-N.Y.) is taking a month off from Congress to recuperate after her marathon run for the presidency.

She is not expected to return to the Senate until July 7 or July 8 after the Independence Day recess, according to two Democratic sources.

“People understand this is a transition for her,” Sen. Bob Casey Jr. (D-Pa.) said.

It is a transition from the possibility of the most powerful job in the world to the reality of a junior senatorship among 99 others in a chamber dominated by overweening egos that have already indicated they will make no special provision for her to ascend quickly to a leadership role.

A statement issued Tuesday by Clinton’s Senate spokesman, Philippe Reines, said the senator “took some well-deserved R&R with her family last week, and she’ll be back here before you know it.
 In the meantime, she continues to work for New York and America, and she’ll be fighting harder than ever for the issues she has throughout her public life.”

Reines would not say where Clinton is vacationing, and most senators said they did not know her location either.

Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.), a stalwart supporter of Clinton’s presidential bid, would say only that she and former President Bill Clinton “wanted to go somewhere private and far away where she could rest.”

The Senate’s Democratic leaders, Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada and Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Chairman Charles Schumer of New York, downplayed the effect that Clinton’s extended absence is having on their ability to move the party’s agenda in the upper chamber.

Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D) of Illinois added that a traditional agreement between Clinton, Obama and the Senate leaders during the primary remains in effect: Clinton will return when summoned for critical votes.

“It [her absence] has not had any impact on anything significant yet,” Durbin said of Clinton’s absence. “She has been great. She has returned every time we needed her.”