Clueless pundits

What I find most depressing about the state of the Washington Post is the sheer political cluelessness of some of their pundits. Lane argues that Bayh's last minute withdrawal from the race has set himself up for a Presidential run against Obama.

There are many problems here, not least the fact that there really isn't a constituency in the Democratic party base that thinks Obama has failed to be sufficiently open to working with the Republicans.

I suspect that his timing was designed to prevent a big name GOP candidate from entering the race. But most party activists seem to have assumed that his real objective was to ensure that the party apparatus would install a blue dog candidate. That has pretty much made the Bayh brand toxic as far as national politics goes.

Bayh's departure appears to be driven by pique as the loss of the supermajority and the GOP tactics of total obstruction have transformed his role from cloture power-broker to a marginal player in the reconciliation-rules 51 vote game.