Yeah. Hill was the best choice in the primary, because the Democrats assumed they had no shot at the seat. Now that they have a shot, they need someone with the name recognition and financial heft to take it. Hill just doesn’t have that. Look for him to get a pro quo somewhere down the line from the party. Maybe he’ll get the party backing for taking Mike Pence’s job in 4 years
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Google the words, “Howard Dean lobbyist” and see what comes up for 2016.
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I’m all for pragmatism and common sense in these things. All the regulars here know that. But, in this case, I’d almost rather have an open, declared enemy than this back-stabbing false balancing oligarch sock puppet. He’s just a prettier version of Joe Lieberman. He’s one of that tiny handful of people who make me sound like the people I deride as the rainbow farting unicorn-mounted purity cavalry.
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You know that the party had to give Hill SOMETHING to get him to drop out for their preferred candidate after he won the primary. You may well have put your finger on what that something is.
Beautifully worded.
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He’s not that pretty .
But, as I recall, Lieberman was the 50th vote to organize the Senate and make Harry Reid Majority Leader. I’d take that again and live with the rest.
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I’m glad I’m not living in Northern Kentucky and facing the necessity of casting a vote for this hack.
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Your comment can’t be emphasized enough. Yes, some of his “centrist” positions are ugly but he is a D and we need them in the majority.
In addition, the last time Bayh was in the Senate, the Blue Dog coalition had more of a presence. Now, they’re basically gone. To circle back to what I said before, the Warren wing of Senate Dems is stronger now than ever. I don’t think there’s much chance of him having outsized influence in certain matters.
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On the plus side, this means Hillary flat out told him no to VP as his name had been floating and I suspect he thought himself a possible pick. Not a fan of Bayh, but I am a fan of more D’s over R’s in Congress. Flip congress to full Dem control, then we can begin flipping conservative Dems to more liberal ones.
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Amen to that. I’d rather have Birch Bayh on the ticket than Evan, and Birch is 88 this year. Weirdly, Birch has a 34 year old son too. Second marriages are odd things…
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Bayh’s FAR from ideal, but let’s not let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
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I’m not sure that I necessarily agree with your thoughts that a smaller Blue Dog coalition means a lesser presence. If anything, with a large blue dog presence you can shop around if you’re one or two votes shy to find a Blue Dog or two with reasonable asking prices for their votes.
If, on the other hand, we have a slim majority and Bayh is a major swing vote then his influence could potentially get quite large. Kind of like how Ben Nelson and Joe Lieberman ended up having a lot more pull than they should have during the ACA vote when their votes were needed to get to the 60 necessary to break the filibuster. (Getting the Public Option taken out of the bill.)
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We’re either going to take the Senate by significantly more than 50 votes or we’re not going to retake it at all. And if he’s the 60th vote to break a filibuster, all he’s going to do is fuck us over time and time again, just like Lieberman did.
Lieberman was, at least, instrumental in getting DADT repealed. He did, in fact, have one or two issues where he was genuinely liberal and genuinely committed to making progress, that being one of them. I see no evidence of that virtue in Bayh.
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I agree with everything you said about Bayh, but would you rather have Todd Young in the seat? Because those are the only 2 options here. I can totally see where you’re coming from and if I had my druthers, Bayh wouldn’t be the Democratic nominee. Sadly, I seem to have lost my druthers, so here we are. As an aside, this feels like bizarro world where I’m arguing pragmatism and you’re arguing political purity. 
ETA:
I agree with this too, but even if Bayh doesn’t win, putting the seat in play, particularly with someone that already came in with 9 million dollars in funding, will make the Republicans spend money defending a seat they have no business having to spend money on. Also, people coming out to vote for Bayh, might help drive Indiana into Clinton’s bucket for the Presidency too, and that would be a nice shiny apple in her bag, for sure.
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Without a large® lead in the Senate in 2016, we’ll lose it again in 2018. If you favor anything more than a short term Democratic control of the senate, this is a good plan.
Remember for as awesome as 2016 is for the Democrats, it is almost the exact opposite in 2018 as far as the Senate seats that Rs and Ds have to defend.
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Hill, who already won the Democratic primary, announced Monday morning that he that he is dropping out of the race.
So is there any information on why Hill is dropping out after having won the primary?
His explanation was in the story :-).
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For Progressives, Bayh is a good opportunity to learn a lesson on compromise. He is not anyone’s idea of a good choice unless actually winning a Senate seat is the goal.
Democrats have a very real opportunity for at least a 2 year period to have a veto proof senate allowing a Democratic president to pack the Federal Courts with liberal judges for a generation. The impact on voting rights alone, is immeasurable.
Having Bayh caucus with Democrats is one less Republican to filibuster those Judicial appointments.
Of course cutting your nose off to spite your face is another approach. The approach favored by the tea party. It’s completely ineffective to actually accomplishing anything but it’s incredibly satisfying to the ignorant.
I really dislike Bayh, but I’d vote for him if it meant a win by a Democrat.
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Basically he knows he can’t raise the money to counteract the out of state money coming in to smite him and Bayh can.
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I think most people will support Bayh when you get right down to it, but you can’t really begrudge a bit of grumbling in the meantime. He is, after all, an upgrade over having a Republican in that seat…but not a very large one IMO.
But that doesn’t mean we have to be thrilled about it and I also think that the party needs to take a firmer approach with him this time around if he does win. He can’t be allowed to call his own shot constantly like he has in the past.
Less carrot, more stick if he steps out of line to often. He should be allowed to vote against the party whenever his vote isn’t going to be the deal-killer, but he needs to
A. Be there when we really need him and
B. Not spend so much time mugging for the camera taking stances against the party that give the GOP cover
Yes, he’d be a Democrat in Indiana and he’s going to need to make some high profile votes against us and do SOME mugging about his independence on TV, but it needs to be significantly toned down since last time.
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