The excruciating, overdue death of bipartisanship is one day nearer. Ben Nelson, Senator from Nebraska, legislative saboteur, and half-assed Democrat, is retiring:
During the few months when his party had 60 votes in the Senate, he was the proverbial 60th vote, and with Republicans unwilling to negotiate on health-care reform he held enormous sway. He held out the longest, and he could have used his vote to demand almost anything. He could have asked for malpractice reform, tougher cost controls, or any other concession that pushed the bill to the right. What he chose to use it for was a parochial demand to give his home state a special Medicaid subsidy. He's retiring after graciously letting the DSCC blow $600,000 on his now-dead campaign in a series of ads that flouted a contested campaign finance rule:
The maneuver may ultimately haunt Democrats, Mr. Collegio added. "By trying to be clever in helping Nelson," he said, "they may be opening up a can of worms they may not have wanted to open up." Democrats in DC love bipartisanship, encouraged by media in a pursuit that most Americans say they can do without. It is also true that very few care what the roll call was on a piece of good legislation, while they almost always know who to blame for bad legislation. Ben Nelson was partly the victim of Washington's isolation from the 99% and partly of the false assumption that voters want a bipartisan solution to everything.
Ben Nelson made the right call today. If he really desired to continue serving the people for another six years he could have actually started listening to them again. That shouldn't be so difficult. But many Democrats still have a hard time doing what's right for the people while in the thrall of staffers and media whose priorities are far different than ours.
Michael Bennet, who rightly criticizes the work ethic of his peers in Washington, still can't seem to grasp the basics of Populism 101. His spokesman recently touted the number of votes he made in concurrence with Joe Lieberman. Really? Lieberman? Bennet could learn a thing or two from Nelson's early departure. He might also pass off some of this wisdom to Barack Obama if the opportunity presents itself.
Or he could keep pursuing the path of bipartisanship with the same results he's already achieved - few to none. |
