Will Fake Democrats Ben Nelson & Arlen Specter Doom Dawn Johnsen Nomination?

Once the party of Franklin & Eleanor Roosevelt, now this human detritus

The lazy members of Congress won't be working-- at least not on the people's business-- today. They get Fridays off to kiss up to contributors and reaffirm their bonds with the special interests who finance their careers and undermine America. Nice! Or maybe they'll take the opportunity to go check in with their doctors or dentists-- might as well use some of that socialist health insurance they get but don't seem to want to share with their constituents. But stalling on health care reform some more isn't the only way senators are betraying the voters who elected them. Nor is stalling on credit card reforms, passed by the House and urged by President Obama. As Dick Durbin explained last week, the special interests own the Senate. The billions and billions of dollars in legalized bribes and lobbying they've spent is really paying off as Congress undermines every reform Obama tries passing.

And it isn't only Republicans. Sure they're terrible and they're obstructing everything. But Obama is having a problem with reactionary, bought-off Democrats as well. And when you're talking bought off and reactionary-- at least pre-Specter-- you're talking Ben Nelson (NE). Nelson votes more frequently with the GOP than any other Democrat-- including (and for the entire year) Specter. When you look at the crucial votes the Senate has taken in 2009, half a dozen Democrats have actually voted more frequently with the GOP than with their fellow Democrats-- from bad to worse (with their Progressive Punch score):

Byron Dorgan (ND) 47.22
Blanche Lincoln (AR) 44.44
Max Baucus (MT) 44.44
Evan Bayh (IN) 41.76
Arlen Specter (PA) 33.33
Ben Nelson (NE) 30.56

For the sake of comparison, Olympia Snow (R-ME) scores a 25.00, Richard Lugar (R-IN) an 11.11, Joe Lieberman (I-CT) an 86.11, Dick Durbin (D-IL) 100.00 and Jeff Merkley (D-OR) 94.44 (exactly the same as Roland Burris, Tom Harkin and that Jew).

A few days ago we looked at how a combination of Republican obstructionism and Ben Nelson is sabotaging one of Obama's best nominations, Dawn Johnsen as head of the Office of Legal Counsel (OLC). Presumably Nelson and his GOP allies don't feel she's as qualified for the job as torturer Jay Bybee was. Today Christy Hardin Smith delved a little deeper and ties Nelson's penchant for voting with the Republicans against Obama-- particularly on the Johnsen nomination--directly to his well-documented corruption. His claim that she once wrote a pro-Choice footnote in a legal brief 2 decades ago doesn't quite hold water.

Nelson is perhaps the Senate's fiercest protector of [pointless] subsidies for student lending institutions, which, not coincidentally, are an engine of job growth in Nebraska. He has vowed to block any effort to reduce those subsidies. And given that Democrats have 58 members and generally need 60 to break a GOP filibuster, he can enforce his will
on his colleagues... Multiple congressional sources say that congressional Democrats have decided to use reconciliation to go after student-lending subsidies, specifically to get around Nelson... Nelson has been tougher on the Obama administration's nominees than he ever was during the Bush years. Funny that.

Nelson was very chummy with Bush and the GOP had long tried-- and is still trying-- to get him to jump the fence. He was more supportive of many of Bush's worst nominees than even some Republicans and often said presidents should have the right to appoint whomever they want-- his excuse for backing cloture votes that could have stopped, for example, John Bolton, easily the worst person ever sent to represent this country at the UN. Among other egregiously bad Bush appointments he had no trouble backing were John Roberts, Sam Alito, Miguel Estrada, Bill Pryor, Priscilla Owen, Henry Saad, John Ashcroft, Alberto Gonzales.

People are starting to wonder why Obama and his lieutenants aren't more effective in pushing through his declared priorities. Is it possible they're not really priorities? People in the Administration and the Senate Democratic leadership certainly understand how the game is played in DC and what kinds of things have to be done to move legislation along. Christy again:

Hell, they got into those positions by horse-trading on it all the way to the top. The sad fact of the matter is that this is how business is done, day in and day out, inside the Beltway. To achieve an objective, you first have to make it a priority-- make it known that it is, and that you are willing to address "concerns" up to a point, or twist arms painfully when that isn't an option.

It's the reason Rahm Emanuel was brought in as Chief of Staff-- his purpose in life is to be "the enforcer?"

Corrupt reactionaries are watering down the progressive agenda to dig America out from under the mess Bush and his allies-- on both sides of the aisle-- dragged the country into. When initiatives like mortgage rescue get abandoned on behalf of "generous" banksters who take taxpayer bailout money and use it to bribe members of Congress like Ben Nelson and Arlen Specter, you know you don't have to go all the way to Denmark to find something intolerably rotten.