The Invisible Hand… Of Bob Menendez

Last month, Ben Nelson did a TV ad defending his vote on health care. He talks straight to the camera and disses those “who wanted a government takeover.” That sounds like an attack on people who supported the public option, because that’s as close as Congress got to a “government takeover.” You’ll recall that Nelson helped kill the public option in the Senate and the Medicare buy-in (after he’d already agreed to it), insisted on the inclusion of harsh anti-abortion language, and then threatened to join the Republicans in filibustering the conference report on the deal he already cut. That Ben Nelson.

Turns out, though, that it’s not a Ben Nelson campaign ad. It’s hard to read the disclaimer, but the ad was paid for by the Nebraska Democratic Party. It’s one of a series of ad touting Nelson’s “courageous” effort to bring down real health care reform…

…So, one wonders, where did the Nebraska Democratic Party get the money to pay for these TV ads?

Today, it looks like we got the answer: the Democratic National Committee. According to the Nebraska Democratic Committee’s latest FEC report, it received a contribution of $459,760.00 from the DNC on December 28, 2009.

via AMERICAblog News: Are DNC donors funding ads praising Ben Nelson for diluting real health care reform?.

So I guess $300 million in Medicaid amnesty wasn’t enough to buy Ben Nelson’s vote on the healthcare plan. He also got another half million in free advertising from the DNC, most likely at the urging of Senator Bob Menendez (D-NJ) who heads up the Dem’s Senate Re-Election Committee.

Menendez, a smug veteran of the take-no-prisoners political wars of Hudson County¹ , was caught off-guard by the Dem Debacle in Massachusetts and is facing the possibility of an upset in Illinois. The last thing he needs is the perception of a domino effect.

Thus the damage control. But Menendez is more of a tactician than a strategist. Hence his recent call to “drive a wedge” between the moderate and right wings of the Republicans in an effort to weaken it rather than strengthen his own party. But the structural damage of huge deficits and high unemployment remain, and pumping some left-over largesse from the 2008 coffers into Nebraska isn’t going to help. He has bigger problems.

1. Home of the infamous Boss Frank “I am the law” Hague.