John Brummett blows another kiss to U.S. Rep. Mike Ross today. Why, he asks, aren’t people so hateful to U.S. Rep. Vic Snyder, who also opposes a public option health plan?

Indeed, Snyder’s long opposition to single-payer insurance or anything resembling it has always been a puzzle to me. He explained it to me once on a sidewalk in Hillcrest when we crossed paths on a walk years ago. I didn’t get it then, still don’t.

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But a few answers to Brummett’s question:

Mike Ross is wrong on just about every issue of importance to progressive Democrats. Snyder isn’t. Vic Snyder has not bragged, as Ross did, about “putting the brakes” on  health care legislation. Vic Snyder didn’t make himself a millionaire from his role in the health industrial complex, he was a modestly paid general practitioner who served poor people well and often.

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I’m unaware that Snyder has ever dissembled about his personal income, as Ross has. Snyder has an exemplary record on campaign fund-raising, confining it to a narrow window each election cycle. Ross is a non-stop money-grubbing handmaiden of the big lobbies who holds fund-raisers hours before key votes critical to rich lobbies. Snyder hasn’t yet suggested, as Ross did, that the Obama legislation would pull the plug on granny. Snyder has cast unpopular votes on everything from fake patriotism to war to sexual orientation. Ross has never demonstrated a gram of such courage.

One’s a demagogue. One isn’t.

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Hope that helps, John.

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