Nebraska Democrat Ben Nelson’s announcement that he is retiring from the Senate can be seen in three different ways. One is that he simply confronted poor poll numbers, coupled with the politics of a state red enough that Barack Obama is guaranteed to lose it.
Second, Nelson’s demise can be seen as a final verdict on a maneuver that transpired almost exactly two years ago. In case you forgot, Nelson and his Arkansas counterpart, Blanche Lincoln, are the two conservative Democrats who saved the health-care overhaul in late December 2009. Had these two senators stuck to their criticisms of the bill, it would have died in the Senate in late 2009. The bill likely would have been downsized to a modest expansion of Medicaid and some tighter rules for pre-existing illness exclusions. Instead, both senators, reluctant to be blamed for the failure of a 63-year-old Democratic-agenda piece and fearing nationally funded primary opposition from the left, swallowed hard and voted yes.
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Neither Lincoln nor Nelson recovered. Lincoln lost in 2010. For Nelson, a significant infusion of off-year independent ad expenditures and relentless attention to Nebraska-based concerns failed to rescue his numbers from the depths they reached after the health-care vote. In Nelson’s case, the failure must be especially galling — given that he traded his vote for a provision that pumped extra federal Medicaid dollars into his state. The “Nebraska compromise” was never honored, and it was a trade Nebraskans never liked anyway, given their resistance to the rest of the law and, perhaps, their indifference as residents of a low-poverty state to a poverty-based program like Medicaid.
In a less polarized time, the Nelson/Lincoln strategy might have worked. But instead, their states’ heavily conservative voters more or less dismissed the senators as disingenuous poseurs who were trumpeting their independence while obediently serving the interests of their party.
There is one final way to see Nelson’s fall: as one more piece of proof that for the first time in the 150-year history of the two-party alignment, there really is a monolithically conservative party and a just as exclusively liberal party. The ranks of Democratic moderates in both congressional chambers are small now, and their centrism is based more on a demeanor and a skeptical brow than a voting record. Democratic-party-line voting in both chambers is at one of its highest points since FDR’s first term.
That’s a development worth lamenting even if you are a conservative who relishes the likelihood that Nelson’s seat will fall into Republican hands. Obama is still a slight favorite to win reelection, and moderate Democrats have had an unmistakable role in checking his policy ambitions. The fact is that without the resistance of Nelson and Lincoln, as well as Joe Lieberman, the health-care law probably would have contained an even more expensive component, the “public option,” which would have simultaneously ratcheted private premiums even higher.
Not surprisingly, then, some Democrats don’t mind the new shape of things. One more vanished moderate means one less restraint against growing government. The party’s ruling class seems fully prepared to sacrifice whole sections of the country, from the South to the Midwest farm belt, on the theory that inexorable demographic trends will more than make up the losses. It’s all weirdly reminiscent of the projections of strategists in the early Seventies who thought that a surge of new young voters, a rise in minorities, and an explosion of educated suburban professionals meant a sustained Democratic majority. They calculated wrong, and lost three consecutive presidential elections as a result. It’s a risky thing, this business of breaking sharply left in a center-right country.
— Artur Davis served four terms in Congress representing Alabama’s 7th district.
It's obvious he'd rather retire than lose. And the Dems don't have anyone more conservative in NE that I'm aware of.
With each state having equal rep. in the Senate, I'm not sure how the Dems can count on demographic trends. As far as where people live, the move is South and West.
And unless the urbanites attack those places in droves, the clout of southern and western states will continue to rise. I'm not sure how that favors Dems.
Lastly, everyone presupposes that Latino voters are solidly Democrat.
Last I checked, they are the most socially conservative voters in the nation, and every single anti-illegal-immigration ballot measure ever approved by voters carried over 50% support from this demographic.
Union members -- as opposed to the union leaders -- are socially conservative, and increasingly hostile to the environmental agenda which has consumed ever more space in the domestic policy dossier of the typical Democrat candidate.
However long it takes, I still maintain that the FDR coalition is held together precariously with twisty-ties, and however long it takes, eventually it will unravel itself, like the wrapping on the loaf of bread.
Anyway, chalk up another victory for Schumer and Slipperface Schultz, right?
All the 2-month extensions of the payroll holiday they can muster can't save this senate majority.
The demographic shift could favor dems because too many of those that migrate to the south from liberal areas also take their politics with them. It is lost on them why they and their employers could not make it in blue states.
I am afraid you are correct about Northeasterners and their lousy voting habits. They have changed Northern Virginia for the worst and parts of North Carolina. I have read somewhere that NC will be a battle ground state. In an event, the GOP must retake North Carolina. And the woman who replaced Libby Dole must be defeated the next time around. 2008 was a sad election year. And I have not forgotten what happened to Norm Coleman.
Whatever we think was going on in Nelson's mind when he decided to retire, it is clear that when he voted for obamacare, he was more concerned about voting with the democratic party than voting for the best interests of his constituency. And then Nebraskans noticed!
Madisonian is quite right - the sad part is that safe dems, from the northeast and west coast are going to stay in office a very long time and will have control of their party as a result - skewing the dialogue - what there is of it - to the left and to demogoguery, non stop. Of course they will be marginalized and in the minority, but they could keep decent citizens out of their party for a long time to the detriment of honest debate.
Why in the world would a moderate to right of center state like Nebraska vote in a liberal Democrat? Of course, I always thought Kansas was the same and yet they had that lying, deceitful, evidence tampering Governor Sebellius - now our Commisar in Charge of Health.
Given the abysmal record of liberalism in this country, given Obama's not only lack of any - I repeat A-N-Y - success at home, not only lack of any but actually ability to have made things much worse. Why do any pundits, any thinkers of things political believe the good sense of the American people will again be abused and tread upon as it was in 2008?
Simple. It won't !!! They see this fool, this narcissitic Marxist for what he is and for what he wants to do. And we will all vote him out just as we have other incompetents and dangers to the country.
I mean, we're just under 1 full year from the election. The GOP does not even have a nominee to whom energies and resources can be directed and around whom the "fight" can be waged. We don't have a team taking on the Chicago gang of Obama. We have 100 voices. But all of that will change - and soon. And when it does, when a real leader is nominated, they will head a cause, a perspective that will shut down Obama like an old car on a wintry day. His 15 minutes will soon enough be over. Where he will be one of the two people in the answer to the trivia question: Q: What two Democratic Presidents were the only one term Democratic Presidents since WW II. A: Carter & Obama.
As a republican in the blueist of blue states calif I see no joy in the loss of a blue dog democrat, and my next stament is based on IF the republican house mess thing to the point that Obama wins and the Republicans lose NE .Their is a real chance the blue dog will be replaced with a dem very far to the left who will only vote the party line. In witch case the Republicans lose someone who sometimes will break with the Democratic Party and vote the right way
Glad he's gone.... although we will have to support him in his retirement years. A big thank you to Ben for allowing a bill to become law that he will never have to use since he gets congressional medical insurance for the rest of his life.
Gee, he misses both SSI and Medicare. He should have to live like the rest of us. That's one more down and a bunch more to go! Nov. 2012 can't get here fast enough.
Thank you for the keen analysis and commentary. My favorite - 'a monolithically conservative party.' Quite good evidence if we follow your logic....and I do. But don't expect much of any type of logic from the mainstreampress when they start ruminating, formulating, or tabulating on this Nelson move.
Good riddance! Same goes to Congressman Stupak who sold his soul to provide that last vote. Out with all of them, just too late.
Politicians who try to fend for themselves and cower away from truly representing those whom they were elected deserve our scorn. For all the Democrats wailing about the GOP, the GOP is much, much more inclusive than the monolithic "my way or the highway" radical Democratic party. Like the old Communist party, you're either red or your dead. There aren't any Dems who can be pro-life, none who realize the dangers of radical Islam, none who speak out against some of the more radical Obama policies - NONE> Talk about monolithic. The Democrats are completely intolerant of anyone who strays from the party line,.
So, Nelson, Stupak, Chaffee et al merely reflecteds the general overall pusillanimity of the Democratic party. I guess for that one shouldn't think poorly of them, merely see them for what they are - A Democrat !
Don't forget Mary "Louisiana Purchase" Landrieu. She's up in 2014 and has never won more than 52% of the vote. She is so "moderate" that she embraced Obama's Stimulus II this fall as soon as Reid replaced the oil and gas tax with a millionaire tax. She's the last link in the Lincoln/Nelson/McCaskill/Tester/Webb/Conrad/Dorgan line of pseudo-moderates. Well, maybe not the very last. Baucus and Pryor have very little to show their red state voters too.
I don't think you reluctantly vote for a $900,000,000 bill. My guess is that they were allowed to "oppose" it until the end in attempt to make it appear that they give a crap what their constituents have to say.
Voters are not stupid, and this is Nebraskans' first chance to vote on Obamacare in the Senate. It isn't a coincidence that democrats don't talk about Obamacare anymore.
If there is any justice in the world, Ben Nelson, along with everyone else who saddled the US with this monstrosity known as Obamacare, will be subjected to the kind of poor service and indignities that it will create for the total of their retirement years. Of course, he and his ilk probably exempted themselves from the law.
"Socialism for thee, but not for me."
Mark Pryor (D-AR) thinks he can keep his head down and maintain a low profile until 2014.
I don't miss an opportunity to call his office to remind him that we WILL show him the door in 2014 over Obamacare as we showed Lincoln the door over it.
He continues to vote Left still today.
However, Pryor's was an important vote against cloture on the DREAM Act mass amnesty in December of 2010. That may simply have been a "pandering to patriotic citizens" vote, but it was important and beneficial.
