Bill Nelson: Obama Has Made Some Mistakes
By Beth Reinhard // September 1, 2011 | 4:00 p.m.
Updated: September 2, 2011 | 5:05 p.m.
Updated at 5:05 p.m.
As Alex Roarty and I wrote today, brace yourself for down-ballot Democrats keeping an unpopular President Obama at the top of the ticket at arms length.
The latest example: Florida Democratic Sen. Bill Nelson, who said today that Obama has "made some mistakes."
In a press conference outside the National Hurricane Center in Miami, Nelson also didn't answer whether Obama will campaign with him in 2012.
"The president and vice president are my friends. They're my former colleagues. Clearly, the president has made some mistakes,'' he said. "The American people are tired of the excessive partisanship and the excessive ideological rigidity where you can't get anything done. The people have had enough. They want their government to work like it's supposed to work....."
Nelson, along with red-state Democratic senators like Nebraska's Ben Nelson, Missouri's Claire McCaskill and Montana's Jon Tester, will have a particularly delicate time in how to distance themselves from their party's leader.
The National Republican Senatorial Committee seized on Bill Nelson's comments as polls show the incumbent vulnerable to a strong challenger. Former Sen. George LeMieux, former state Rep. Adam Hasner, former Ruth's Chris CEO Craig Miller, retired U.S. Army Col. Mike McCalister and businessman Ron McNeil are competing in the Republican primary.
"It's hypocritical for Sen. Bill Nelson to say that President Barack Obama has made some mistakes during his tenure, when the reality is that Nelson has voted with Obama over 97 percent of the time in Washington and is just as responsible for those mistakes,'' said NRSC spokesman Jahan Wilcox.
"From Adam Hasner's ethics violation to George LeMieux's ties to corrupt GOP chair Jim Greer, even rank and file conservatives in Florida are disgusted with the field of Republican Senate candidates. The only thing that unites Republicans in that race is their determination to end Medicare in order to preserve tax breaks for oil companies," responded DSCC spokesman Shripal Shah.
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