Ben Nelson - what a complete prick this guy is

[Ugmo]

This is the asshole who railed against a public option and then cut a back-room deal to secure 100 million more in FEDERAL funding for Medicaid in his state. What a total hypocrite move that was. And now he is saying this:

Sen. Ben Nelson (D-Neb.), who cast the deciding 60th vote to break a GOP filibuster, said after the vote that the conference report could not include "material changes" if it wanted to keep his support.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/12/2 ... 02802.html

So this asshole is going against the will of a majority of Americans for his own selfish purposes. And the 60 House Democrats who stated that any bill without a public option is unacceptable are going to have to bend over for this fucker? I hope this bastard gets voted out of office next time, although I'm sure he'll have a cozy insurance industry job waiting for him when he does.

The House passed a good bill and the Senate has fucked it up entirely. And the GOP got exactly what they wanted: obstruct and block at every juncture out of pure principle, and eventually a toothless bill will get passed that doesn't change a thing. Business as usual in Washington.

[Thebottomline]

So who helped him cut a back room deal? Sounds like more than one asshole is involved to me.

[Ugmo]

^^^^^ I have no doubt the Senate bill is very unpopular. Progressives hate it because it is completely toothless, and conservatives hate it because it was passed by the Democrats despite the Republicans' best efforts to block anything at all from being done. And on top of that I'm sure Fox News is telling people to hate it, despite the fact that it probably won't change a damn thing.

So who helped him cut a back room deal? Sounds like more than one asshole is involved to me.

The Prez hisself, or actually more like Rahm Emanuel probably. I find that extremely disappointing, but I don't think asshole is the right word to describe those guys. Keep in mind they wouldn't have had to cut any deals with anyone if the Republicans hadn't been 100 percent obstructionist purely for the sake of trying to score a political victory against Obama. I at least credit Obama with trying to do something for the good of the country, while the Republicans are just being selfish bastards as usual.

But this Nelson guy is an asshole of the highest order, holding the bill hostage ostensibly because he doesn't want "big government" while securing a deal to get even more federal funding for his state. What a hypocrite. Apparently the move is incredibly popular in Nebraska too, because people there don't like the fact that they are the beneficiary of such a shady deal.

[chickenona]

Yeah, I don't know how the entire Democratic caucus ended up at the mercy of Ben Nelson but he's gonna go down in history as the guy who screwed this up completely.

[Ugmo]

Yeah, I don't know how the entire Democratic caucus ended up at the mercy of Ben Nelson but he's gonna go down in history as the guy who screwed this up completely.

The way I look at this is that guys like him definitely didn't help the matter, but most of the blame goes to Obama for not even pretending to support a public option. To reiterate, I think he did that with the best of intentions, because he probably figured that the defeat of a good bill would be much worse at this juncture than the passage of a weak bill, but shit on a shingle, when you actually have widespread popular support for a public option it makes very little sense not to exploit that and see how far you can take it.

I think Obama looked at the failure of the Clinton plan and was bound and determined to do everything completely differently. I really hope there is a possibility that the House members will stand their ground and force the Senate to make some concessions, because otherwise this is a pretty hollow victory for the Dems.

[chickenona]

A hollow political victory for the Dems, and a big defeat for taxpayers.

[Ugmo]

Oh yeah, and this fillibuster shit is a joke. What is even the point of requiring a simple majority to pass a bill as long as 41 Senators can block the thing anyway?

[chickenona]

Biden had no answer for that when Jon Stewart asked him about it.

This is where the Dems start to suck. They don't have the backbone to just jack it through like the Republicans did when they had the majority.

[Ugmo]

That's the problem with being the big tent party though - you're going to get differences of opinion within the party. Now look at the Republicans: the only ones left are the ultra-conservatives who pretty much agree on everything. That being said, the GOP really is better at getting their troops to fall into line... even the rare moderates like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins are apparently willing to put the interests of their party above the good of the nation.

[Ugmo]

But this Nelson guy is an asshole of the highest order, holding the bill hostage ostensibly because he doesn't want "big government" while securing a deal to get even more federal funding for his state. What a hypocrite. Apparently the move is incredibly popular in Nebraska too, because people there don't like the fact that they are the beneficiary of such a shady deal.

I meant incredibly unpopular. Even Nebraskans think this guy is a tool.

[Ugmo]

To blame the minority party for obstruction and the reason why the bill had a difficult time in passing is ludicrous when considering the democrat party has 60 votes to pass anything they want. The Republicans cannot stop anything. It is a problem within the majority party and not vice versa.

It's not ludicrous at all. The minority party refuses to support anything proposed by Obama out of principle. Anything at all, because the only thing they care about is scoring political points against him, rather than doing what's good for the country. And thanks to the fillibuster, that means the Democratic leadership has to put together a bill that every single Democrat (and Independent) will support. Even assholes like Liebermann, who is a Republican for all intents and purposes. The only possible outcome of this scenario is an empty shell of a bill.

If the Republicans cared about something other than themselves we could have had a bill that actually benefits people.

[Ugmo]

And I'm not only blaming the Republicans either, but also fuckheads like Joe Liebermann and Ben Nelson. A selfish asshole is an asshole, no matter what party he is registered to. In this case it just so happens that all 40 Republicans are assholes.

[Ugmo]

I wish I still had the pleasure of voting against Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins, but alas, I now vote in a state with two relatively sensible Senators.

[Thebottomline]

Thats too bad about Ben Nelson because he did do a damned good job being governor of Nebraska. When he was gov he cut spending, lowered taxes, and got the state a record surplus.

[Nevermind]

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Even assholes like Liebermann, who is a Republican for all intents and purposes. The only possible outcome of this scenario is an empty shell of a bill.
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Just because Liebermann supported the former war on terror, doesn't make him a republican. The guy votes with the democrats the majority of the time.

[Ugmo]

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Even assholes like Liebermann, who is a Republican for all intents and purposes. The only possible outcome of this scenario is an empty shell of a bill.
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Just because Liebermann supported the former war on terror, doesn't make him a republican. The guy votes with the democrats the majority of the time.

Yeah, and every once in a while he's campaign for the GOP presidential ticket or help them kill a decent health care bill. What a valuable Democrat!

[lerxstcat]

Well, Lieberman IS an Independent, technically.... and the Democrats tried to unseat him in the primary and failed to do so. Granted he picked a bad one to buck the party on here, but you can't say it's wrong for him to not always toe the Dem line when they tried to oust him from his Senate seat.

Dems should have pushed this one through. There WOULD be problems in implementation, but the sooner you start, the sooner you work through the glitches and start to see positive results. Better to do it now so by 2012 good results start to come in, then worry about the 2010 midterms.

[Ugmo]

Good point. They did oust him in the primary though - but he ran in the general election too and beat the Democratic nominee. I don't know whether the party tried to oust him or he was just so unpopular among Connecticut Dems that he lost to a primary challenger. I'd have to research that. In a weird way I respect him for not always letting a party tell him what to do - but he's done a lot to make himself unpopular among his constituency. For example the public option was VERY popular in Connecticut. You kinda have to wonder whether he torpedoed it because he's in the insurance companies' pocket (Connecticut being the insurance capital of the world).

The whole situation is weak. I guess Obama figured he didn't want to risk pushing a public option and then suffering a crushing defeat on that, so he went with a watered down bill that he thought could get passed more easily. I would really like to see the House stand their ground on the public option. You have to think guys like Liebermann and Ben Nelson would feel a LOT of heat from their constituencies if they tried to block what is actually a popular proposal.