Thoughts on Ben Nelson

Ben Nelson, the Demoractic Senator from Nebraska, has announced he won't seek reelection in 2012.  I guess this means that a Republican will in all likelihood take over that seat.  Nelson has been an unreliable Democratic vote in the last three years, and pundits kept saying he was trying to walk a tightrope to please his very conservative state while remaining a Democrat.  On Morning Joe this morning they were saying that ObamaCare was his Waterloo, and his vote for that legislation made him too vulnerable.

Jon Chait calls him "pathetic", explaining that he could have used his all-important vote for health care to demand some sort of conservative policy such as malpractice reform or cost controls, but instead went the more corrupt route of getting a special "cornhusker kickback" for his state- essentially he tried to make it up to his conservative constituents by being bought off instead of trying to improve the legislation.  This was captured by the Press, however, and he was pilloried as he deserved to be.  His reelection seemed unlikely in the aftermath.

A couple of days ago I took a trip to the JFK Library in Boston, and was reminded of Kennedy's book Profiles in Courage, in which he identified politicians who had taken votes that were politically difficult or even suicidal in the interest of doing "what was right for the country" instead of what would benefit them personally.  Ben Nelson could have done that, and I wonder if it wouldn't have worked out OK for him personally too.  What sickened me about the Democrats during the health care negotiations and the aftermath was their cowardly response to run away from the bill after passing it.  I wanted to see them go on the offensive- it always looks better when politicians do that.

Imagine if Ben Nelson had worked to improve the bill, and then went back to his conservative state and trumpeted its benefits, confronting his opponents on the matter and taking them on.  The optics might have looked OK.  Playing the coward didn't work out so well, that's for sure, and now he looks like a corrupt and broken man.  Bad bet.