I'm Not Bayhing Evan as VP

Rumors are currently swarming around the possibility of Evan Bayh for VP.  It's not just HuffPo any more--Indianapolis's largest paper, John Nichols, and HoweyPoliticsIndiana (HPI) are all reading the tea leaves.  

Tactically, there's a logic behind such a move, given the $5mm Olympic media buy planned by Team Obama.  That buy would offer them the perfect chance to introduce their new ticket.  It would also allow a campaign that appears to abhor loose ends to have everything wrapped up well before Denver.

To borrow from Sherlock Holmes, what's most instructive here is the dog that isn't barking.  We're not seeing any rumors of an impending announcement of a Sebelius or a Kaine nomination.  We're not seeing announcements of planned Obama appearances w/ either of those prospective running mates in KS or VA.  If it's not Bayh, it looks like the announcement will not take place until after the Olympics, which would put it up at the start of the Convention.

Nate Silver at FiveThirtyEight (538) has jumped in on the act as well.   His "Latent Liberal" piece (more on that subject later) offers further evidence of a buzz that is not currently around any other short list candidates.  Bayh's closeness to the Clintons, the decision of Obama to vigorously contest IN, and his experience as both a gov and a senator support the rumors.

If Bayh is, indeed, the choice, I give Team Obama considerable credit for their internal controls.  In the 'net age, forcing people to speculate at this stage in the game is an example of impressive team discipline.  As I prepared this diary, I kept checking to see if something more definitive had leaked out.

OTOH, if Bayh is, indeed, the choice, I consider it to be a mistake of the highest magnitude.  Politically, it's an iffy move.  538 only gives Obama a 28% chance of carrying IN at present.  Truth be told, there has not been a public poll in 6 weeks, so it's a difficult state to project.  I would assume that the Obama Camp would do internal polling of the state before making a move of this magnitude, so, perhaps, they have better info.

While John Nichols clearly doesn't like Bayh's ideology, his essay focuses more on the likely political impact of this move.  Since I assume that Team Obama has polled IN, I further assume that they wouldn't choose Bayh unless they saw that he could help them pick up 11 EVs.  I agree w/ Nichols that Bayh may not be likely to help them elsewhere.  He could probably sell in VA, a clear battleground state w/ 13 EVs, but Kaine would sell even better there.

My concern is w/ Bayh's Senate track record.  HPI has a solid recent analysis of that record.  Bayh, like the candidate he supported in the primaries, voted for the IWR, and like her, he has subsequently taken the "If I knew then" approach:

If Bayh had to take a vote back, it would probably be on the 2002 Iraq War Resolution. While campaigning as a presidential candidate in New Hampshire in 2006, Bayh explained, "It turned out some of the most important information we relied upon at that time just was not accurate. There were no weapons of mass destruction. The administration has proven to be terribly incompetent in the way they’ve carried this out. Of course, we’d make different decisions based upon different facts as we know them today."

I didn't accept this argument from HRC, and I'm not accepting it from Bayh, either.  Bob Graham, the Senate Intel chair, told his fellow caucus members that he was voting against the IWR b/c of what he read in the NIE, and he urged all of them to read it as well before they voted.  To put it bluntly, if Bayh didn't know the true facts when he voted, it was b/c he didn't do his homework.

His 2006 comments about the future course in Iraq are not the least bit reassuring:

Appearing before the Washington Post editorial board in 2006, Bayh refused to endorse a pull out. "We’ve got to be somewhere between ‘cut and run’ ... and mindlessly staying the course," Bayh said. "You’ve got to have a sensible middle ground." Iraq is the one issue that a number of Hoosier Democrats have taken issue with the senator who delivered the party out of the desert in 1988.

His vote to condemn the MoveOn "Gen. Betrayus" ad in 2007 shows how he feels about the netroots.  His vote to ban partial birth abortions in 2003 should generate some controversy w/ women's groups.  Nate Silver attributes Bayh's voting record to his home state:

Bayh is considerably more liberal than you would expect of a Democrat from Indiana. The most conservative states to presently have elected Democratic senators are Indiana, Nebraska, and Arkansas (which has two Democrats). Bayh is notably more liberal than either Nebraska's Ben Nelson, or Arkansas' Mark Pryor and Blanche Lincoln. The next-most conservative states with Democratic senators are Louisiana and South Dakota; Bayh is more liberal than Tim Johnson or Mary Landrieu. Put differently, there is no senator more liberal than Bayh in any state more conservative than Indiana.

Having spent my undergrad years in the Hoosier state, I understand Nate's point.  It doesn't, however, make me feel any better about Bayh.  I would never want to see Ben (or Bill) Nelson, Pryor, Lincoln, Johnson, or Landrieu on a Dem ticket, either.  Given the lay of the political land in 2008, we can do better than that.

What bothers me most about this potential move is that it is reminiscent of Dukakis choosing Bentsen as his running mate 20 years ago.  That choice of a safe, bland running mate set the tone for what followed from the Dukakis campaign.  It was a playing not to lose choice instead of a playing to win choice.  As it turned out, Lee Atwater's scorched earth campaign, which was unique at the time, trumped those concerns.

I don't want to play not to lose again 20 years later, esp since the GOP is already running a scorched earth campaign, and I sure as hell don't want to see Bayh on the ticket.  Words cannot describe how much I hope that these rumors prove to be unfounded.