The White House discovers that leaving things to Congress doesn’t amount to much of a communications strategy. That and the day’s other political news in the TPMDC Morning Roundup.
The tide may finally be starting to turn on this whole nonsense story drummed up by Dick Cheney that trying the Christmas bomber Umar Abdulmutallab in civilian courts (and by necessity reading him his Miranda rights) is a dramatic departure from how we’ve handled terrorist arrests in the past.
Rachel Maddow shut down Rep. Aaron Schock (R-IL) when he tried to pull that rabbit out of the hat again yesterday on Meet the Press. Watch.
Valentine’s Day and President’s Day have always been in a quiet conspiracy against a full and just celebration of my birthday. But in case you’re wondering, today’s my birthday. And I’m 41. My mother-in-law told me over the weekend that this was a ‘serious’ birthday. And noted that in a mere nine years I’ll be 50. But despite my tendency to fret about age, I decided this was not a good way to look at the situation. Today I’m very thankful for my wife, my two beautiful sons and my dog Simon who I fear does not get the attention he did before we allowed these two crazy ruffians into our household but is no less excellent than he was when he came into our lives 6+ years ago. I’m also thankful for you because you and a lot of other TPM Readers have made it possible for me for almost ten years now to do what I wanted to do each day when I got up in the morning. So thank you.
If there’s one thing that can tempt me to take John McCain’s side in a dispute, it’s Joe the Plumber blaming McCain for having “screwed up his life.”
Evan Bayh will announce today he’s retiring from Congress. Which is a huge blow for the Democrats and a big, big surprise.
Seems like the very effective political knee-capping of Dan Coats was all for naught. And that raises something questions in itself, since I’d heard that Bayh’s people played a big role in that.
Says the Indy Star …
Only days ago, Bayh’s staff, close associates and Indiana Democratic Party Chairman Dan Parker, who was manager of Bayh’s re-election campaign, had assured an Indianapolis Star reporter hat he would definitely seek a third term in the U.S. Senate. And Democrats recently released a poll showing Bayh easily ahead of both former Sen. Dan Coats and former U.S. Rep. John Hostettler, two of the four Republicans seeking the GOP nomination.
What seems very odd about this is that Bayh and his political team were making active preparations for a run as recently as mid-late last week. And not just the kind of public, optics stuff that you need to be sure to do to keep your options open. We’re looking into it.
This hasn’t gotten much attention yet. But after calling for dialog and meetings and all the rest for months, House Minority Leader John Boehner now seems to be saying he won’t attend the White House Health Care Reform summit until President Obama essentially disavows the Democratic plan currently in Congress.
We’ll have more details on this shortly. But Bayh’s timing seems to have made it all but impossible for Indiana Democrats to hold a primary for his seat. The deadline for petition filings is tomorrow. (The formal ‘filing’ deadline is Friday. But our understanding is that the signatures actually have to be in tomorrow — though we’re trying to get further confirmation on that point.) So that means that prospective candidates need to decide to run and collect all the necessary signatures in about 36 hours. In other words, all but an impossibility. And it’s not even really clear who the potential other candidates are.
To be clear, that does not mean that no Democrat will appear on the ballot in November. It means that the party apparatus will choose a candidate, rather than have one chosen through a primary — if in fact no filings take place in time.
It’s a good thing that back room deals and smoke filled rooms are having a resurgence of popularity these days. Because it seems that the timing of Sen. Bayh’s decision will leave the decision on who to nominate to replace him in the hands of the state Democratic party.
There was already another Indiana Democrat trying to get on the primary ballot to run against Evan Bayh. That’s Bloomington cafe owner Tamyra d’Ippolito. But she’s still short (but not that short) of the signatures necessary to get on the ballot. She’s about a thousand signatures short statewide and still short in the 8th congressional district.
Eric Kleefeld just spoke to her. See his report.