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Democracy For America and the Progressive Change Campaign Committee have taken aim at Senator Ben Nelson with an ad that unfortunately confuses a commendable message on the urgency of health care reform with a cheap and ultimately destructive attack on Sen. Nelson.
In the ad, Mike Snider of Ralston explains the horrible choices and dangerous consequences he faces as a small businessman and father under our current health care system. The sad thing is that the first thirty seconds of the ad deliver exactly what the people of Nebraska need to hear. But, then - for no good reason - it adopts a gun-to-the-side-of-the-head-approach to winning over Ben Nelson's vote that unfairly accuses him of "leading the charge to delay health care reform." That's not at all an accurate depiction of the role Nelson has actually played.
If Snider is looking for those who are truly "leading the charge to delay health care reform," he needs to look no further than his other Senator, Mike Johanns, or his Republican Congressman, Lee Terry. In fact, Snider should have seen Terry in action throughout the House Energy & Commerce Committee's mark-up of HR 3200, during which Terry cast vote after vote against the very sorts of reform he so desperately needs.
Look, I would love to see more genuine progressive leadership from Nelson on the issue of health care reform. But, at the same time, I appreciate that Nelson approaches this issue from a radically different place than most liberal Democrats. He doesn't perceive the same inherent competition between corporate interests and the needs of the people. His approach isn't quite "what's good for Blue Cross is good for Nebraska," but I can't say that's too far off the mark.
This isn't something new. This is who Ben Nelson is - and what the people of Nebraska voted for in their two-term Democratic Governor and U.S. Senator. As frustrating as that may be in the present case, it's a choice we've made as Democrats and as Nebraskans - one we certainly didn't regret when it meant taking the majority in the U.S. Senate after the 2006 election.
It's cheap and unfair to reduce Nelson's well-known philosophical difference with the left-wing of the Democratic Party to just some insidious instance of quid pro quo. That's what this ad does in its second half - accomplishing absolutely nothing but giving the Nebraska Republican Party the best gift it could have hoped for as it works to claim Nelson's seat in 2012.
This ad is lose-lose for anyone who really cares about health care reform. No one who actually lives in our state would kid themselves about how far we have to go winning over the people of Nebraska on this issue. This attack obscures the urgency of reform in favor of taking cheap shots at Nelson. At the same time, it makes it a liability for Nelson should he eventually stand with us for reform, opening him to attack for bending to pressure from liberal special interest groups that have nothing at stake in the future of our state.
I haven't hesitated to challenge Nelson when he's been wrong about health care reform. I will continue to do so. But, we cheapen our cause by stooping to these sorts of attacks against an ally like Nelson - just to keep him in line - rather than focusing on winning over the people on the merit of our ideas.
Meanwhile, we who are actually working to build something here in Nebraska don't have the luxury of imagining Ben Nelson is our worst enemy. We know better. No matter our occasional differences, we know Nelson is our one elected representative who will listen to our concerns - our one representative with whom we can actually work.
Most importantly, we know our Democratic Senator well enough not to tolerate his being reduced to some cartoonish slave to insurance industry money while he struggles to do what's best for the people of Nebraska. That's not the Ben Nelson we know nor the Ben Nelson we trust to continue working on behalf of every Nebraskan.
