So Ben Nelson is packing it in. After years of sabotaging the Democrats from the inside, and voting with Teabaggers over and over to “protect his viability for re-election,” the Senator from Nebraska has elected to get out of town.
Good.
I’m not under any illusions that he’s going to be replaced with anything but the worst sort of Confederate redneck, given that Nebraska is basically Alabama with wheat. But the fact of the matter is that in the US Senate, if you don’t have 60 votes, it doesn’t much matter whether you have 51 or 59. The only thing Nelson has brought to the table for years is ideological cover for right-wingers who want to cry “bipartisan opposition!” for their scorched-earth campaign against the Obama administration. So if you’re actively taking things off the table, you should pretty much get to miss dessert.
So long. Fuck ‘im. As long as we keep 51, we’ll be fine, because don’t think for a second that the GOP is going to keep the filibuster around once they hit a bare majority in the Senate. We could have solved this already – and done a lot more for the country – if Harry Reid had any balls at all, but instead he allowed the Senate to be led around by the likes of Ben Nelson.
Makes you wish Nancy Pelosi was a Senator.