Ben Nelson is Caught Behaving Just Like a Democrat

Dan Riehl notices another sell-out by Senator Ben Nelson. In this case it turns out to be an unnecessary one. Riehl makes the following excellent point,

"There are no Blue Dogs, as I posted previously. There are only Democrats not required to sell-out on any particular vote. And if they're needed, they do what they're told."

This is a great observation and reminds me of when I was in college and interned for a democrat state legislator. He had been elected on the strength of Bill Clinton's coattails in 1992 in a relatively conservative district in San Diego County. He, like Clinton, had positioned himself as a "New Democrat". As such, he was analogous to a "Blue Dog" democrat of today and he strove to maintain that image as a moderate to conservative. One way he did this was to vote against the Speaker Willie Brown's very liberal democrat majority on bills that the district was against and which Brown had plenty of votes to pass. The Speaker's office would do a headcount and if they had enough votes, give my boss permission to vote against that bill even if he supported it. This helped him build a moderate voting record that he could say was in step with the district.

Where things got interesting was when a bill was controversial and the vote was going to be close. That was a worst case scenario for him as he might actually have to vote with the liberals and against his constituents. As Riehl notes, he was only a "New Democrat" when his vote was not needed. The way the Speaker would get around this was novel. The legislature voted in alphabetical order. Yet an assemblyman could switch spots with someone else. On several of these bills, my assemblyman whose name began with "C", would switch with an assemblyman whose name began with "Z". That would allow him to be among the last to vote. We would spend time sitting around the speaker-phone listening to Speaker Brown's office for directions. Once they had the clinching vote, they would tell assemblyman C to vote no, allowing him to maintain the perception of being a moderate to conservative democrat.

Sounds a lot like today's "Blue Dogs", eh? Fortunately, the Republican wave in election of 1994 swept the assemblyman away and the district actually has a representative that works for them and not the party. Perhaps we can do the same thing in 2010.