Would Dems Miss Nelson If He Was Gone ?

Senator Ben Nelson (D-Nebraska) is not up for re-election this year, but he will be in 2012. Would the Democrats miss him if he was defeated in that election? I ask the question because it seems like its been an awful long time since he voted like a Democrat and supported the efforts of President Obama to make this country better and help pull it out of recession.

While Democrats were trying to cover all Americans with health insurance, Nelson was one of the main senators responsible for watering down the health care reform bill and insuring it would contain very little real reform. The after seriously weakening the bill, he turns around and votes against it anyway.

In 2009, when the Democrats were trying to pass a decent stimulus bill to get the economy moving again, Nelson teamed with Republicans to slash funding for NASA and eliminate funding for Head Start, the National Science Foundation, child nutrition, and school improvement and construction. He replaced this with more funding for Defense Department operations and procurement.

He has consistently voted with the Republicans on bankruptcy reform, environmental protection, abortion rights, lawsuit reform and trade matters. Twice he voted to advance the Federal Marriage Amendment. He voted against stem cell research.

More recently he has opposed the new financial reform bill that imposed new regulations on Wall Street in the hopes of preventing another financial meltdown (which helped to kick off the recession). And he opposed the renewal of unemployment benefits for the long-term unemployed, while supporting a renewal of the Bush tax cuts for the rich.

Like his Republican friends, he said he couldn't support extending unemployment benefits because it would increase the deficit (by about $33 billion), but sees nothing wrong with extending the tax break for the rich (which would increase the deficit by about $115 billion). Frankly that makes no sense. Helping the workers who badly need help is bad, but giving more money to the rich who don't need the help is a complete abandonment of the principles of the Democratic Party.

Nelson may call himself a Democrat, but this blue dog DINO has never acted or voted like one. If he were to lose in 2012, I doubt the Democrats would even notice he was gone since he votes like a Republican. In fact, he is further to the right than several senate Republicans.

If the national party gives him any money for his re-election campaign in 2012, it would be a waste of valuable resources that could be spent to elect a real Democrat.