Will Ben Nelson defy the Jester In Chief & vote "NO" Christmas Eve?

[Warph]

Beginning with a pledge to make health care more accessible to millions of Americans, Zero and his Demoratic cronies on Capitol Hill have instead made millions of Americans into serfs of the insurance companies who paid for their Senate seats.  Not only did the Zero predictably dump on seniors.... (500 billion dollar cut in medicare....) a demographic that didn't vote for him, but he managed to stab the same youth vote that got him to where he is today in the back by forcing them to buy health insurance in order to subsidize his social welfare programs.  What a guy.

The combination of Zero's sense of political invulnerability and a Demoratic congress desperate to stave off midterm election defeats during a depression brought us this far.  And pork got us the rest of the way.  And what the Demoratic congress got is a final bundle of pork to take with them on their way out the door.  Pelosi and those Senators and Congressman ensconced in safe liberal parts of the country may be safe, dammit, though even their constituents are increasingly disgusted with them, but their congressional majority that was built on conservative Demorats is very shaky indeed.

The Demorats have fought their own mini-civil war to demonstrate their basic intolerance, but the health care debate is likely to demonstrate that the progressives in the Demoratic party are the same unprincipled political clowns as their more centrist counterparts.  It really doesn't matter whether you're Ben Nelson or Al Franken.  It all comes down to the same thing, as a very dysfunctional party which tried to use an economic recession as the backdrop for a power grab has been caught with its hand in the pork barrel by an increasingly exasperated public.

Every compromise made to push through ObamaCare has only highlighted the incoherent hypocrisy of the Demoratic party in selling out every section of their base, ignoring the incredible mountain of public debt already created by Zero's senseless spending sprees and demonstrating that the part of the bill that they were willing to fight and die for last week, turned out to be the part of the bill that no one needed after all.  Forget reading the bill, as it turned out no one could even manage to read through the amendments, for crying out loud.

The states are not happy.  No happy campers there.  Liberal state governors and mayors are protesting the bribes that Nebraska and Louisiana got, and arguing that they were punished for providing health care.  Conservative state politicians, such as the Gov. of Nebraska being one, are fighting against the imposition of the plan, with South Carolina's Attorney General already launching an investigation.  And the so called Blue Dogs are either retiring or switching parties, which makes the Demoratic battle in the 2010 midterm elections that much more of an almost impossible uphill battle.

Crafty Zero began his term by posturing as FDR, but declaring "Mission Accomplished" on the stimulus plan while the economy was being flushed has made him less popular than Bush was in the final days of his second term.  ObamaCare was supposed to fix all that, but as it turned out people wanted jobs, not a giant government rationed health care plan.  Not getting the message, which isn't surprising, congress has kept pushing forward on the theory that since they're screwed either way, they might as well try and deliver something they can point to as an accomplishment in 2010.  It's not exactly statesmanship, but it is politics... more like dirty politics.... as usual.

The resulting chaos has however not only made an already unpopular congress, unpopular... it has helped make Zero extremely unpopular.  And every dirty trick and foul consequence of ObamaCare, from protests over mandatory coverage, to the escalating size of congressional pork in the aftermath of Ben Nelson's 100 million dollar bribe and the "Louisiana Purchase", to the death panel subsection that cannot be repealed, to the shouts of glee at insurance companies as their stocks soar on the news that Congress has just put a gun to the head of every American and marched them down to their local insurance office.... will come home to roost at a Demoratic White House and Capitol Hill.

After this... the idea of selling any kind of big tent party is a farce.  The only way Conservative Demorats can win in 2010 is by distancing themselves from Zero and their own party, sometimes literally as Alabama Congressman Parker Griffith has done by actually switching parties, or by staying officially within the ranks yet detaching themselves from most Demoratic policies.  With the Demoratic left exposed as a sham and the Demoratic right facing a choice between defection and retirement, there isn't a whole lot for the party left to run on.  If Sen. Nelson wants to save his job and do the right thing for millions of Americans Christmas eve, he should vote "NO" on this disaster called a health bill.

With ObamaCare, the party has reached into its hat and pulled out the largest social welfare program since the days of LBJ.  And that has made them about as popular as LBJ.  Out of touch with the concerns of ordinary Americans completely and utterly tone deaf to the national dialogue, the almighty Zero still continues his soft shoe routine as Jester in Chief.  "Be a Clown, Be a Clown...."  ...and the beat goes on!