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.
sounds like you’re falling into the four lethal cynicisms, which you wrote for me a few years back.
in fact, today you sound like me, in this comment:
am I cynical, or prescient?
Brendan, thanks for reminding of that old diary.
Sometimes I wish that a person with far better web design than myself would/could do an accurate mock-up of the major progressive blogs as if they had existed at various points in American history. E.g. Daily Kos during the New Deal, Washington Monthly in the Gilded Age, TPM during the Civil War and Reconstruction, Atrios in the Revolutionary period, Booman Tribune at any time, etc. I wonder how much progressive anger despair we would see in those page? Is it perpetual? More than now, or less? The nature of human perception always makes our present unhappiness seem the worst of times. And yet history teaches us that real progress does happen, continually, and often in the face of seemingly insurmountable odds. I try to keep this in mind during difficult times for progressives (i.e. most of the time).
In related news:
was a politically timid Hippie puncher.
The more things change…
Bayh is just a creation of the system- i am indifferent about him as a person. A rotten system creates rotten politicians. When unions got weak and Clinton took the party in the DLC-Rubin direction, it was inevitable that as winnable seats came up, they would go to politicians like Bayh. Bayh always just struck me as a dinosaur of sorts who failed to adapt to the new politics that began emerging in the wake of Katrina and the failure of the Bush presidency. He just kept wanting the world to go back to a place where the GOP called the shots and he got to sit in the room and shake hands and be the guy that made it all bipartisan and good. He couldn’t reinvent himself when the political winds turned, and his failure to adapt made him frustrated, and he took out that frustration by blocking progressive legislation.
Bayh could still be a viable politician (for 2016 and beyond, he’s a young guy) if he had made that pivot and helped Obama enact progressive legislation. I just think he lacked the imagination and foresight to realize how powerful he could have been if he had handled that pivot well. Sometimes history stalls because the guy at the plate you need to hit a home run just strikes out. And guys like bayh after they strike out, are so bitter about it, they take their ball and go home like a teary-eyed 8 year old.
Evan Bayh doesn’t bat for my team. Never has. He would never have made the pivot called for here.
Given his political lineage, Bayh couldn’t take advantage of his father’s name and connections unless he ran for office as a Democrat. Given that, his entire career consisted of using that label while betraying the populist strands of his father’s legacy at every opportunity.
As Dylan sang, ya gotta serve somebody, and Bayh has always served the people he’s (more openly) working for now. He’s been utterly consistent on that score. Given who he is, the Democratic label was the best means to an end – not an ideological affinity.
Exactly.
Let me do everyone a favor and list the chairmen of the DLC and the years they served as chairman.
Any questions?
Hasn’t the DLC disbanded and the Turd Way taken up that mantle?
Where does Bayh have a political future? Taking the job at the Chamber assures that he’ll never run for office again.
He doesn’t. I wrote that if he had worked with Obama rather than against him in 2009-2011, he has the pedigree, geography, bio and fundraising network to be viable.
I don’t really expect my politicians to have principles or a set ideology. Sure, some do, but for the most party, they are ambitious, charismatic people who come to power based on the backing of certain groups and offering a certain message. And then things change, politicians adapt and sometimes they end up a different politician at the start of their career then after it. Their views change if they think changing those views will give them more power. Bayh actually was a rather stubborn (or principled) politician and it ended his career.
not one thing is surprising.
he was a HO while in the Senate. And, he’s a HO after the Senate.