The least hard thing to predict in politics over the last year has been that Evan Bayh would move from the Senate to corporate America’s lobbyist brothel. Let’s see, after telling Ezra Klein that he was quitting the Senate to do something more honorable like teach kids how to do business, he has so far joined:
- The McGuire Woods law firm, which specializes in representing “national energy companies, foreign countries, international manufacturing companies, trade associations and local and national businesses.”
Apollo Management Group, a giant public-equity firm.
Fox News, as a contributor.
U.S. Chamber of Commerce, as part of their “anti-regulation messaging team.”
This is how it works, ladies and gentlemen. This is why normal people can’t catch a break. There are a lot of good Democrats out there, but enough of them are bought by the other side that we can’t get shit done. And there just isn’t a whole lot we can do about it. Even with a Senate where the majority ruled, we’d need 60 votes to get anything done. And Citizen’s United just made it immeasurably worse. And people wonder why we didn’t try for single-payer. They wonder why we didn’t get a public option. This is why.
This is a raw glimpse into the rot at the heart of our system. Even the milquetoast is rotten.
