Bodies are hitting the floor with an alarming tempo but are they smote and dead or are they on the deck playing possum? It’s a mixed bag. It seems obvious that we will not be hearing again from Patrick Kennedy except perhaps an updated mugshot. Dodd is dead and gone but this may be a net benefit for the Dems since he had been a zombiefied graft machine specializing in the home mortgage market (remember that?) for years. We might safely call it political hari kiri. In South Dakota and Indiana dull thumps tell the same tale; a prominent Democrat makes a surprise announcement retiring. But while Dorgan is as dead as Dukakis, Bayh is about as close to an obituary as Michael Meyers.

Bayh is a gunslinger’s dream. Karl Rove and James Carville could both tell you that a prominent Senator who has bona fide executive experience (Guv of Indiana) and talking-head chops is about the optimum statistical beast to bring to the Electoral College. Sitting Senators do not fare well (Obama/Biden violates that truism) but Bayh elides that with this timely bug-out that will lead to a fairly high-profile if brief career in the quasi-government sector of academia, big-biz and think tanks. There is however a tactical problem; the current policies of the Obama Administration are quite, quite unpopular and seem unlikely to improve. Bayh, like every Democratic Senator, voted for them all. So what to do? It is simplicity itself.

Blame Obama.

Do you think a Democrat could not or would not make hay against his own party or President? Oh friends, you need to pay more attention (as does the whole nation) to the actions and rhetoric in the numberless primaries. Anything can be run against. Anything. By anyone. McCain came up with a formula that allowed him to run against George Bush while staying the course on the Global War on Terror. He did this by lending the weight of his POW experiences in the hands of Communists to the spurious definition of swirlies and late nights as “torture“. He also signed on for closing Guantanamo with all that implies and if he isn’t silently thanking providence that the election spared him actually trying it, well, he should be. You might recognize this as the interplay of “wedge issues” and “triangulation”. It’s textbook. Those with long memories will recall that the young Senator Obama was forced to run against the Clinton Administration in the Dem primaries. If only Hillary had not forced his hand, he certainly would have rather run ON the Clinton Record. If there had not been an actual Clinton in the primaries Edwards, Biden, Obama and even Kucinich would have been, to one extent or another, running as a neo-Clintonite. As it was put so well in a different though related context, in The Godfather, it’s just business. Or Lord Palmerston, who knew that nations (and politicians) have no permanent friends nor enemies, only permanent interests.

And that interest, perpetually and perenially is to lay their hands on the tiller. They MUST be in charge, else the deluge. It is easy to believe that Obama and his army of geniuses see things this way, not least because they say it daily. But the same is true of them all. It is true of Al Gore and that is in large measure why he sees unavoidable doom in a world without a Gorocracy. It was the same of McCain and Bush and Reagan, too. In this regard the Obama Presidency is anything but unprecedented. It is anything but historic. Indeed, far from any serious “change” it is more of the same… MUCH more of the same, yes, but still the same. The single greatest political problem we have that is the root of nearly all the others is this infantile desire to have government use its great power to address all the bumps and even the twists and turns of economic life. Sorry, such a thing cannot be done. Serious attempts are financially ruinous AT BEST! At worst they are transformative; melting civic trust into civic resentment, smothering productive activity because it prevents the actors from profiting therefrom. It has been bad for decades. It is now a crisis.

Is this what Evan Bayh will run against? Yes. It will be an exercise in cynicism scarcely to be equalled in modern experience but somehow I think he is up to it. While Obama blames Bush Bayh will be blaming Obama and his late colleagues in the Congress, attacking from the Left and the Right simultaneously and THAT, dear friends, is business as usual as Bayh tries to claim that always popular mantle, None of the Above. And Bayh will not be alone. As the ’08 primaries were everyone against Bush so the next election cycles will be a war of all against Obama while other events and adversaries all erupt under Barak’s feet. Already you can be certain that Hillary is scouting the foothold from which she will launch her assault. Hopefully, Obama will not be the last in the nation to realize that he is, after all, just another politician without any magical powers or even discernably profound insight. The Bayh decision declares open season on Obama. It’s about time.

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