Evan Bayh really is Bayh-partisan

So Senator Evan Bayh is taking his whiny ass and going home. He says he doesn’t love Congress anymore. There’s a simple explanation for that: he’s not important anymore. But don’t count him gone altogether; while he’s reaping the financial rewards of two terms in the Senate—beyond the $13 million campaign kitty he’s taking with him—he’ll also be laying the groundwork for a run at the 2012 presidential nomination.

When Republicans were in the majority, Bayh was valuable to them because he and his little troop of bipartisan boy scouts were key players in the effort to confirm all but the most demented of Bush’s judicial appointments by eliminating the filibuster as an option for Democrats to block the nominations.

But now that Republicans are all filibuster all the time, they no longer need to woo Bayh. And in his own party, the balance of power has shifted into that tiny gap to his right occupied by Ben Nelson and Mary Landrieu, along with Mad Joe Lieberman.

He probably is genuinely wounded that Republicans have embraced the filibuster so fervently, because he does seem genuinely to believe that he and his Republican colleagues in the anti-filibuster “Gang of 14″ of the Bush years represent the sane political center. It must be painful to find himself rejected by Republicans and neutered by Democrats.

So it’s no wonder he’s going home. He won’t be disappearing, though. He’ll be maintaining as high a profile as he can while quietly conferring with the likes of David Boren, Sam Nunn and Michael Bloomberg on his prospects as a “unity” candidate running to the right— redefined as the center by Bayh and brain-damaged pundits of the David Broder ilk—of the rapidly exsanguinating president Obama.

Much of the reaction to Bayh’s impending departure from Democrats and their supporters has been negative. He is, they say, opening the door to another Republican gain in the Senate. In fact, though, his timing seems calculated to deeply screw the Indiana GOP.

Bayh made his announcement the day before ballot registration closed, so the Republican field, led by former Senator Dan Coats, is frozen. The GOP are stuck with what they have. Democrats, though, now have until June to anoint their own candidate, and he (almost certainly a he) won’t be subject to a potentially debilitating primary fight.

But Coats, assuming he’s the eventual nominee, does have to suffer through the primaries, and it won’t be pretty; he brings a lot of baggage with him.

The problem for Coats is that he spent a good part of the past decade as a well-connected Washington lobbyist, which doesn’t bode well politically in the age of tea partiers and grass-roots anger at Wall Street.

The former senator has had scores of corporate lobbying clients over the years, including health-care firms (Amgen, United Health Group, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America), bailout recipients (Bank of America, Goldman Sachs, Merrill Lynch) and communications companies (BellSouth, Sprint Nextel, Verizon). Another past client is Cerberus Capital Management, where Dan Quayle — whose seat Coats took over in the Senate — is a top executive.

Lobbying disclosure records also show that Coats represented foreign firms or governments that could prove controversial, including the Indian government and Bombardier, a Canadian aerospace firm. Coats also represented a Texas oil-and-gas company that partnered with Venezuela’s Hugo Chávez, records show.

Along with representing Goldman Sachs and Hugo Chavez, who are not the most popular figures among Indiana voters, Coats also hasn’t lived in Indiana for a decade and since he left—like Bayh, who replaced him, he quit the Senate—has made some unfortunate remarks (on tape) about his once and future home state.

In the fall of 2008, Indiana’s former Republican Sen. Dan Coats and his wife, Marsha, were dreaming about retiring to his second home in North Carolina.

“If you don’t tell the good people of Indiana, Marsha and I decided that there might be a better place where some of these older bones can absorb,” Coats, 66, told the audience during a speech supporting John McCain’s presidential campaign.

Chavez, Goldman, North Carolina … this won’t be an easy few months for the aspiring Tarheel. And Bayh, of course, is well aware of that, as are the various other Democrats likely to lobby for Bayh’s spot on the ballot. So it’s unlikely that his departure will damage his home state Democrats, and it’s possible that the Democrat who replaces him will be somewhat less irritatingly unctuous.

In any event, good riddance.

UPDATE (2010-02-16 T19:34:04): In a hilarious development, there seems to be a groundswell of support (outside Indiana) for a John Mellencamp candidacy. The rocker is known to hold liberal views and of course has the advantage of being able to write and perform his own campaign songs.