Bayh

A Democratic majority in the Senate probably means having some massive tools in the caucus. Baron Hill was going absolutely nowhere in the Indiana Senate race. Winning Indiana would really help Democrats retake the Senate. I get all of this. But boy am I not excited about the return of Evan Bayh. It’s not that I mind having some relatively conservative senators in the caucus who don’t always vote the right way. I understand that Heidi Heitkamp and Jon Tester have to make compromises at times. But Heitkamp and Tester aren’t self-aggrandizing grandstanders. And that’s what Evan Bayh is. It’s not about politics, it’s about him. He’s a huge hypocrite, writing an editorial when he dropped out of the Senate in 2010 decrying money in politics and then immediately becoming a top lobbyist. And that was perfect Bayh. A total blowhard with a moral compass of jello. I won’t quite say he’s as bad as Joe Lieberman because at least Bayh was in a state where centrist politics made a certain amount of sense. But he’s pretty awful. I have enjoyed a Democratic Senate caucus without people like Bayh, Lieberman, or Max Baucus. I guess there is Joe Manchin, but he’s holding on for dear life in a hard-right, white supremacist state where the next Democratic senator may be decades in the future. So even there, he can be explained away.

So I will accept Bayh if the price is a Democratic majority. He may well win. Cook immediately moved the race to Toss-Up status. But I hope against hope that he is smart enough to at least read the tea leaves that his absurdities have no place in the Democratic Party anymore and that he is in the party of Sherrod Brown and Jeff Merkley and Elizabeth Warren.