“After all these years, my passion for service to my fellow citizens is undiminished, but my desire to do so by serving in Congress has waned,” Bayh will say.
This was going to be a competitive seat and now Republicans will be heavy favorites in this Senate seat. Yet another Senate seat is trending Republicans. Anyone that thinks that Republicans can't overtake both chambers had better redo their math.
More coverage of the retirement here.
I'm a little surprised he'd do this considering how strong his re-election chances were, but Bayh has always made it clear that considered it his responsibility to make sure Obama wasn't too liberal. With the Republicans out for blood and the Democrats now with no choice but to use reconciliation, Bayh no longer found himself the center of attention.
ReplyDeleteThis will hurt the Democrats as a majority, but it will strengthen them as a party. That's one less Democrat who sees everything as a reason to move rightward, one less Democrat to bad mouth his party on Fox News, and one less Democrat who would threaten to filibuster his own party's agenda.
Bayh said that one of his final straws was the recent Senate vote to kill a bipartisan commission to come up with solutions for the federal deficit and our long-term debt. “The measure would have passed, but seven members who had endorsed the idea instead voted ‘no’ for short-term political reasons,” Bayh said, in an accurate recounting.
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