So Long. Farewell. Auf Weidersehen, Evan Bayh!
Things just got much more interesting for the Democratic Party today. Evan Bayh, the insanely-popular Senator from Indiana, announced that he won’t run for re-election this year. The deadline for anyone wanting to get into the election is tomorrow, so the Dems don’t have a lot of time to consider their options. I predict a lot of whales will die to supply the midnight oil that they’ll be burning all around Washington and Indianapolis tonight.
Bayh said in his explanation today that he doesn’t love Congress. Good for him. Most of us don’t either. The way voters are turning against members of Congress who have invested a lot of their time and our money into setting up their own personal fiefdoms, Bayh was likely to be a member of a very exclusive club: Democrats with poll numbers above 50 percent.
His retirement brings the number of Democratic Senators who have already packed it in to three (Dorgan in ND and Dodd in CT are the others). Add this to the two open seats in peril in Delaware and Illinois, Harry Reid’s dismal poll numbers in Nevada, and vulnerable Senators in New York, Wisconsin, and Washington, and there’s a very good chance that the party that once held a filibuster-proof majority could end up in the minority by next winter. Heck, not even Barbara Boxer is safe.
There has been some interesting commentary flying around the internet on this. I don’t have anything deep to add to it except for this: Barack Obama had better be very careful or he’ll find himself on the bad end of a primary challenge in 2012.
William Jacobson has the reaction from the left side of the blogosphere. They are, as usual, not sparing the hyperbole. As well, the MSM, in the form of “journalist” Rick Sanchez is already spreading the meme that Bayh wasn’t really all that much of a liberal at all. That’s a tough assertion to defend given Bayh’s lifetime ACU rating of just over 20 but this is Rick Sanchez we’re talking about. Reality isn’t exactly a longtime acquaintance of his. Johanna Neuman, Andrew Malcolm’s partner at Top of the Ticket, also gave it a swing with a wickedly deceptive headline: “Sen. Evan Bayh is retiring — is partisan gridlock sparking an exodus?”. “Partisan gridlock”, huh? That’s a hard thing to sell when the Democrats held unstoppable majorities in both chambers of Congress. But I suppose there is a narrative to push and what’s a little alternate reality between the media and the rest of us, right?
Pat Austin is running the definitive roundup on All Things Bayh. If something new breaks on the story, she’ll have it. You can also hit the monster threads at memeorandum, where it seems every blog in the known universe has commented on the story.
Other Posts of Interest:
- Lieberman Can Stay, But Only If He’s Defanged and Muzzled
- The Year of the Disappearing Narrative.
- The Reality-Based Community (“Reality” Being a Variable)
Category: Our New Democratic Overlords
