Kos points something out as he lays out the case for/against Bob Kerrey as a U.S. Senate candidate from Nebraska. Votes are not everything. Bob Kerrey is more liberal than Ben Nelson. He’s way more liberal than Chuck Hagel. But that doesn’t mean that Bob Kerrey won’t be an enormous thorn in the side of liberals if he goes back to the Senate.
Chuck Hagel is valuable to the liberals because he is willing to listen to reasonable arguments…at least on matters of national security…and he is willing to go on teevee and say the emperor has no clothes. He’ll even go the whole hog every once and a while and give us his vote as well as his rhetoric.
Ben Nelson has a crappy voting record. But Ben Nelson does not go on teevee very often to criticize liberals. He’s even less inclined to criticize or undermine the Democratic leadership.
But Bob Kerrey can’t help himself. He trashes liberals every chance he gets. He’s not loyal…he’s said he would endorse Hagel if he runs again.
Kerrey is a toxic candidate for two reasons. First, the aforementioned tendency towards disloyalty and trash-talking. Second, he has been disastrously, catastrophically wrong on the Iraq War and the War on Terrorism. There’s a reason he was selected to serve on the 9/11 commission. There’s a reason that Max Cleland resigned from the commission and that Bob Kerrey did not.
We simply do not need another disloyal Democrat that wants to privatize Social Security, fight a permawar in the Middle East, who hates liberals, and can’t keep away from a microphone.
There’s no doubt that Bob Kerrey can win the Nebraska seat. And, on most votes, he’ll be a big improvement over what we have now. It doesn’t matter. We have been in this fight for 7 years and Kerrey has been fighting against us…giving cover to the other side…on all the most important issues, he has been wrong.
Only in the Bush administration does that kind of record get rewarded.
