According to the Huffington Post, Democratic senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska is one of six centrist senators who have asked President Obama to delay a vote on health care reform. Nelson also "spoke derisively of the House health care reform effort, which taxes the wealthy to subsidize coverage, calling it 'class warfare.'" In a nutshell: Nelson is a douche (albeit not the only one): by choosing to use Republican rhetoric to defend the interests that, to a significant extent, have bankrolled his career, he has taken the side of his owners against 95% of Americans, and he must be defeated when he seeks re-election.
Those who, like Nelson, oppose a public option understand that--by doing so--they are protecting the moneyed interests that they have chosen to represent. Nothing, short of a public health care system shaped after those of most European countries, threatens the earning potential of for profit health care more than the public option, which Sen. Nelson is not loathe to defending using inflammatory rhetoric and scaremongering.
Contrast Nelson's rhetoric and position with that of Robert Reich, always the astute commentator of political and social affairs, who defined the House plan (no doubt to the jubilation of conservative spinmeisters who will twist his comments to their ends) "the most blatant form of Robin-Hood economics ever proposed." Reich correctly notes that "the best-off 1 percent of American households take home about 20 percent of total income -- the highest percentage since 1928." That should put in proper perspective Sen. Nelson's douchebag comment that health care reform as proposed by the House is "class warfare." If that does not make your head explode, nothing will.
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