Here in Wisconsin the question people who have tired of Dems get the most is, ‘Why aren’t you voting for Russ Feingold?’

After all, it’s presumed he’s liberal, and if you’re a liberal, you must like Russ, right? He’s a stalwart individualist, a socially liberal, fiscally conservative, one of a kind Senator and we should be happy to have him out there working for liberal interests.

Well… no. Because, see, I actually *am* a liberal, and Russ is an opportunistic turncoat who likes to mouth the platitudes and then vote against our interests whenever it actually counts.

Here’s Senator Feingold’s schtick: he paints himself in all things as a Principled Iconoclast by casting meaningless protest votes, some of which he arranges himself, when it won’t make any difference to the outcome. Then, when important votes come up, where he could adhere to his putative principles, he quietly flips and gets in line.

You can see this pattern over and over and over again.

Here are some handy and recent examples:

–Russ Feingold loves his public image as a staunch defender of civil liberties. If he was, though, why did he vote to confirm Elena Kagan, a virtual cipher whose only well known legal positions are in favor of expaning Executive power?

Answer: Because it was a close vote. Kagan was only confirmed 63-37.

–Russ Feingold loves to cast himself as a fiscal conservative, a careful steward of the public funds. So why did he vote to reconfirm Ben Bernanke as Fed Chairman, after his grotesque failure to protect the economy, leading to the massive bailouts of the big banks?

Answer: Because the Administration wanted him reconfirmed.

–If Russ Feingold is big on fiscal conservatism, why did he vote in favor of the Obamacare health debacle (twice) which will see health care costs continue to soar year after year? For that matter, why did he vote for a bill that uses the force of government to seize private assets and hand them over to big corporations with no real guarantee on their providing any service at all, let alone a quality one?

Answer: Because it was a *very* close vote, and if he had stood up for, say, the majority of Americans who wanted a public option or some, heck, any method to contain costs instead of opening up their veins to the health insurance cartels, they might have gotten it.

–Why did civil liberties loving Russ Feingold vote for the above bill when it dramatically restricts the right to choose and makes women into second class citizens with regard to their health care?

Answer: Because President Obama needed a victory. Aren’t you following along?

‘But’, your hypothetical inquistor might ask, ‘what about all the good things he’s voted for?’ Well… yes, Feingold is good at finding ways to cast meaningless votes that are good for PR. Sometimes he even invents the opportunities himself.

For example, here’s Feingold voting against the up-to-100 billion dollar bailout of the IMF. That was a real act of courage and risk to the Administration’s agenda all right – it passed 91-5.

(The way the bill worked was the Administration extended a massive, 108 billion dollar line of credit to the IMF and then said the risk was so low that they only had to set aside 5 billion to cover our chances. Witness Media Matters tap-dance on that one)

Sometimes, however, symbolic but meaningless votes don’t just present themselves to Russ, so he has to invent them. Here’s the vote on Feingold’s proposed amendment to an appopriations bill, aimed at forcing the Administration to actually come up with plan to get out of Afghanistan.

It failed spectacularly, 18-80.

But, but, Feingold voted to end the war!

*rolls eyes*

Feingold himself is outright proud of his symbolic actions that have no real world impact whatsoever. Check this out, from his campaign website:

I opposed many Bush Administration policies that ignored the Constitution and the rule of law. In September 2008, I held a hearing to urge the next President to make restoring the rule of law a top priority. In early 2009, I issued a 100-day Report Card to assess the progress made by the Obama administration on this front.

Ooh yes, how’d that work out for you?

The ‘report card’ is a laugh riot – in order to avoid having to condemn very much, most of the grades are ‘Incompletes’. Bonus: he claims that Obama ended US torture by the military and let the Red Cross see all our prisoners.

You know, except for the black site we still operate at Bagram, where torture and a lack of accountability have gone on even during the Obama Administration. Highlights of the torture Feingold says Obama stopped (but really didn’t) include:

The detainees reported being forced into nudity and humiliated upon arrival, malnourishment resulting from inadequate and foul-smelling food, sensory deprivation and sleep deprivation resulting from cold temperatures and inadequate bedding. They reported being blindfolded and shackled when leaving their cells and losing complete track of the time and date. The International Committee of the Red Cross was also reportedly denied access to the detainees and the secret facility.

Yessir, that’s some great accountability Feingold provided us.

And then there’s Feingold’s signature, deficit cutting set of Big Ideas to reduce ‘wasteful government spending’.

What would those be? Perhaps, say, targeting the half trillion dollars a year the Pentagon gets?

Well… no. Short of cutting a few useless military programs, Russ is fine with that.

He does want to cut NASA funds though, and end a radio broadcast to Cuba. That’s something, right?

This is the story of Russ Feingold in a nutshell: big, symbol rich talk, but very small ideas, and conveniently they never get in the way of him voting against his supposed principles. Reconfirm Bernanke? Sure. Put Elena Kagan on the Supreme Court? Why not. Force the IRS to funnel taxpayer dollars via a backdoor tax to Wellpoint? Yep!

But man, if you need someone to stand up and rail against something that is a shoe-in like the IMF bailout attached to a war supplemental, or alternately, to push an idea that has no chance to pass? Russ will be right there in the limelight.

Unless he loses tomorrow, here in Wisconsin. Personally, I don’t care much one way or the other; his opponent’s an insufferable twit who sounds like he’s a few (dozen) IQ points short of a MENSA meeting.

But I’m not going to vote for him either.