Say Anything

Liberal Senate candidate Heidi Heitkamp has a new ad out today. I features two teams of pee-wee football players, one with red uniforms and one with blue uniforms, chasing and pig-piling one another on a football field as Heitkamp strides in the background lecturing about partisan politics.

The message? Politics is a football scrum, and Heitkamp is above it all.

I have no doubt that this is an appealing message for voters, and an easy one for Heitkamp to send given that she hasn’t had to actually govern in Washington DC. The problem with the message is that it doesn’t jive with Heitkamp’s actions.

Heitkamp has said that she’ll vote to keep Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in his leadership position in the chamber she’d be serving in. This would be the same Senator Reid whose partisan majority hasn’t passed a budget since 2009. The same Senator Reid who has railed against coal, dismissed the Keystone pipeline and has said “we don’t need a balanced budget amendment.” In fact, he’s called a balanced budget amendment “radical.”

In her ad, Heitkamp specifically mentions that a balanced budget amendment is something that has been derailed by partisan politics, yet one of the partisans who has derailed that effort is the majority leader she’d vote for.

Heitkamp has also said she’d vote for President Obama again. This is the same President Obama who opposes the Keystone pipeline, who has railed against coal and has dismissed the idea of a balanced budget amendment as well.

In short, Heitkamp’s actions don’t match her words.

By the way, Heitkamp’s support for a balanced budget amendment? It’s support for an amendment that would only balance about 1/3 of the budget.