http://bayh.senate.gov/news/pr…..FBD4386F1F

He supports electric cars.

Senator Evan Bayh, a member of the Senate Committee on Energy and Natural Resources, joined executives from Anderson-based Bright Automotive to unveil a concept version of the company’s new plug-in hybrid electric vehicle that gets 100 miles to the gallon. Bright officials demonstrated their new vehicle, the IDEA, to Senator Bayh, who discussed Indiana’s role as a national leader in making the high-mileage, high-tech cars of the future.

http://bayh.senate.gov/news/pr…..6033EE0ADE

Bayh is not nearly far enough to the right to fit in with the Republican crazies, but he does represent Indiana. That’s not an easy job for a liberal. I used to live there, sharing my state with John Birchers and other extremists.

Supporting someone who is more liberal sounds great, but progressives would have to lay the groundwork in Indiana first. The ordinary people of Indiana need information so that they can make up their own minds. I believe that if they were better informed, they would support more liberal candidates — and that Bayh would probably suddenly discover that, in his deepest heart of hearts, he is more progressive than he has voted in the past.

If you aren’t going to run such a candidate, and the Republicans run a moderate, and I would argue that it is in our interest to encourage moderate Republicans to run against a Blue Dog Democrat in most instances, then you offer a deal to Republican candidate. take your top five issues and rate then one to five with an inverse point award. If the Republican can support your first and third highest priority action items for a total of 8 points, then Bayh would have to agree to support enough items totaling more than 8 points, or else you throw your electoral support to the moderate Republican. It’s a flexible combination of ideology, your five top issues, and pragmatic politics, we support whoever supports more of our issues no matter what political party he or she represents.

Bayh is expendable. In fact, I would go so far to say that any leader of the Blue Dogs is automatically expendable and should be targeted for defeat in his or her next election by the liberal wing of the Democratic party. Otherwise the liberal wing has no practical power that the Blue Dogs should fear except the remote possibility that you find the right person with the right voice who carries the day against all odds.

You shouldn’t be afraid to elect a moderate Republican if he or she will support more of your highest priority items than a Blue Dog Democrat. You offer them both the same deal, and you back the winner to the hilt. If it’s the Republican, then you have six years to work with him or her to expend your common interests, or you have six years to find a real Democratic challenger to run for that seat.

I repeat, Evan Bayh is completely expendable. You need to treat him accordingly by letting the GOP know that you could support a moderate Republican, and then you let the chips fall where they may. And you target the next leader of the Blue Dogs, and the next, and the next. Ad infinitum.

That’s how you respond to obstructionists who subordinate more important public interests to their for-profit private interests. You crush them if you can’t convince them. There is nothing the least bit complicated about such a response.

And you guys are nothing if not complicated.

Fuck Evan and his 74%. I’m sick of him and all the Blue Dogs like him that can’t stand prosperity.

So there.

I highly doubt the SBT would do that and even with their support, I still think you’re a really long way from a win in the general.

If we run a liberal Dem strong in the primary we can force Evan ever so slightly to the left, just like Sestak forced Specter to swallow a compromise of EFCA.

Evan Bayh has surpassed droopy dog as the most hated character by the left…

While I take issue with this, it is worth considering.

Bayh isn’t trying to find a crevice to wedge open so he can further a policy goal – he is trying to exploit for purely political advantage against his own party’s interests because he can only remain relevant by standing out.
Good luck with that, Evan.

In CT, the Dem primary was in August. 90 days before the general. If your candidate doesn’t run in the primary, s/he’s got 90 days to overcome all the name recognition the other two candidates built up in the primary.

Running as an independent also means you have no already established GOTV force on election day. The GOP uses what’s left of the Klan. The Democrats use the unions.

I don’t know how Bernie did it.

He may still be popular in his own state, but he is universally loathed in progressive circles where his traitorous behavior is taken more as naked oportunism than born of any idealism…

Evan Bayh has surpassed droopy dog as the most hated character by the left…and although we progressives are still bashed by both Republicans and even Dems (to show their centrist creds) our power is growing each day, as the dead tree newspapers get more and more irrelevant to the every day lives of most Americans.

Bayh, bayh Bayh!

I don’t know Indiana either, but once you start talking independent, you unite both parties against you. If you run on a narrow platform, such as health care, one of the Democratic liberals will try to steal that issue away.

You have to get signatures to get on the ballot. BOTH parties will pour over those signatures, looking for ANY mistake. They in a bi-partisan kind of way they will crucify you in Indianapolis Star, the largest daily in the state. For good measure they’ll crucify you in the South Bend Tribune, the second largest daily in the state.

The unions aren’t going to support you, because they don’t think you can win. They can’t afford to piss off the winner.

If either party thinks your candidate might draw votes away from their candidate, they will hire lawyers to find about fifty other ways to keep your candidate off the ballot.

Should the Senate become more evenly divided along party lines again, that calculation would work out differently. Unfortunately, for the next couple of years at least, Bayh will probably remain a Democrat.