Democrat Evan Bayh - Obama take this job and shove it

[SB Shock]

http://voices.washingtonpost.com/postpartisan/2010/02/evan_bayh.html?hpid=opinionsbox1

Interesting analysis of why Evan Bayh is retiring. Basically he has presidential ambitions and wants to cut ties with the loons and try and avoid the potential political train wreck.

Sen. Evan Bayh (D) of Indiana, however, is the exception. His stunning retirement from the Senate is essentially a loud and emphatic “screw you” to President Obama and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid.

There were alot of democrats who were elected recently who campaigned as conservative democrats. You have to wonder how much longer they will toe the party line.

For months now, Bayh has been screaming at the top of his voice that the party needs to reorient toward a more popular, centrist agenda -- one that emphasizes jobs and fiscal responsibility over health care and cap and trade. Neither the White House nor the Senate leadership has given him the response he wanted. Their bungling of what should have been a routine bipartisan jobs bill last week seems to have been the last straw.

[Maggie]

I was never a big fan of Bayh – he always struck me as....well...not genuine.

Strange move – even though he was faced with what promised to be a tough reelection campaign – he would have still been favored to win. Bayh obviously has his eye on something beyond spending time with his family.

Does he want to position himself to challenge for the Democratic nomination in 2012? I don’t think that is likely. Maybe he would like Biden’s job – Biden has said in the past he really didn’t want to be Vice President (probably bunch of hyperbole – it is Biden we are talking about) and Bayh was on Obama’s short list. Should that happen and if Obama wins a second term he sets himself up for a Presidential run.

One practical thing that might come of this is the Republican’s may have picked up an additional vote in the Senate for the time being – on health-care, cap and trade, etc. I think he is more likely to cast right leaning votes from here on out – normally suicidal but we live in strange times.