Uh, just a few problems with this ad (higher-quality version here): 1) attacking fellow Democrats – including Mark Warner, who’s doing a fundraiser for Nye this evening, I’d point out – for voting “aye” on the “Wall Street Bailout” and also “aye” on health care reform, is not cool; 2) claiming to have voted against the health care bill because it “cost too much,” when in fact the nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office said it cut the deficit by $1.3 trillion over 20 years, is fundamentally dishonest; and 3) claiming to have voted against the “Wall Street Bailout,” when that vote actually took place in October 2008, BEFORE Nye was elected, is really really not cool. As Virginia Young Democrat Kristin Smith writes:
Why is Glenn Nye saying he voted against the Wall Street Bailout in his new TV ad when he wasn’t even in office yet? Also, why does he keep insinuating that he’s an “independent voice”? Nye stop backing away from the Democratic party before I back away from you
In general, I’d say that attacking members of your own party – and undercutting those fellow party members’ talking points – simply because you’re desperately trying to save your own skin, is not acceptable. But that’s exactly what Glenn Ney is doing here. It needs to stop, immediately.
UPDATE: On Nye’s supposed vote against the “Wall Street Bailout” (which, while unpopular, almost undoubtedly prevented a complete economic meltdown in the fall of 2008), perhaps he means this “symbolic” vote, which was “rendered…moot” by the Senate’s defeat of “an identical resolution” (with Webb and Warner both voting “nay,” by the way). So, technically Nye can say he “voted against the Wall Street Bailout,” but only on a meaningless, symbolic vote long after the “bailout” was already signed into law by President Bush, and also after the U.S. Senate had already defeated an identical bill.
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