First, Nelson released a statement on 7/29/09 that he was unsure how he'd vote on Sonia Sotomayor's confirmation to the Supreme Court. That position was reversed shortly. It appears that Nelson has suddenly discovered Sonia's great credentials:

In reaching his decision, Nelson said, he was impressed by the solid endorsement of the American Bar Association and by Sotomayor's extensive experience as a judge. "The record shows she is not an activist," he said, and that she has "a great respect for the law."

Second, on the health care reform bill, Progressive groups began airing ads that attacked Nelson's refusal to back a strong, public option. By the end of the day, Nelson had demanded that progressive groups stop airing the ads or risk stopping health care reform:

n a statement issued late in the afternoon by Nelson's office, spokesman Jake Thompson warned that if the new series of ads calling out the Senator's "stalling" on reform were "an indication of the politics going into August, then health care reform may be dead by the end of August."

In response to this threat, progressive groups upped the ante and tripled their ad buy.

Nelson also tried to diffuse the situation by calling the local Nebraskan who appears in the ads.

"To be real honest with you, I don't know if he was just being aggressive or nervous but he just wanted to put out his position on the issue," Snider recalled in an interview with the Huffington Post. "He said he supported the public option but one that wouldn't affect the current plans of 200 million Americans." "I told him I didn't understand. And he tried to explain it. He put his position out. He said if we went with a full public option -- which he called a government plan -- it would drive the price down and hurt private companies. I said, 'you mean competition.' And he replied that it would force people off the private plan and onto the government plan." "That happened twice," Snider concluded. "He was telling me how bad a public option would be and when he was done I said, 'So you don't support a public option.' He would reply, 'That's not what I say.'"

So, it looks like the pressure is working. We need to keep it up. If we can get Ben Nelson to fold, some of his other conservative Democratic Senators may also fold.