The Media's Billion Dollar Ad for Evan Bayh

[Joanne98]

by Cenk Uygur
Share this on Twitter - The Media's Billion Dollar Ad for Evan Bayh Tue Feb 16, 2010 at 10:28:58 AM PST
The mainstream media has been giving Evan Bayh a big fat sloppy kiss for the last 24 hours. Every single story is about how moderate and centrist and independent he is. Golly gee willikers, Evan Bayh is such a pure and innocent person and he just couldn't take the corruption of Congress anymore. He was so fed up with the partisanship and like any great man decided he must strike out on his own and leave DC.

Come on, are these people this naïve or do they have a stake in this? Do you really think Evan Bayh only has pure motivations and was the last good man in Washington. This is absolutely absurd and on many fronts the exact opposite of the truth. No one made a deal with corporate lobbyists faster than Evan Bayh did. He wasn't sick of the problems of DC, he was the problem of DC.

Cenk Uygur's diary :: :: Bayh masked his craven capitulation to corporate lobbyists with a veneer of bipartisanship and moderation. If he sold out to enough special interests, he could claim that he was on both sides. But the one side he was never against was business interests that fed him his campaign cash.

So, he is a typical fake politician; I get that and I can live with it. What bothers me is how the media plays along. They have been running a giant ad for Evan Bayh's future political career or future lobbying career over the last couple of days. There is never a skeptical story about how Evan Bayh might be retiring to cash in on lobbyist money. And for those of you not familiar with the process - and apparently that's the entire DC media - the most powerful tool lobbyists have is the implied bribe that politicians get at the end of their career. If you play ball and do what you've been told, you're nearly guaranteed a multi-million dollar payoff at the end. Look at Tom Daschle, Dick Gephardt, Billy Tauzin, Dick Armey. This list goes on and on. Everybody gets rich, oh right, except the American people.

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http://www.dailykos.com/storyonly/2010/2/16/837613/-The-Medias-Billion-Dollar-Ad-for-Evan-Bayh

[DJ13]

1. Im glad somebody noticed this

K&R!

[OHdem10]

2. A fit and proper salute to the Media Darling.by the Media.

[Justitia]

3. Yeah, I'm sure his wife making over $ 2 million as a Board Mbr of insurance cos had nothing to do

with it either.

Which is why Bayh himmed and hawed on every healthcare proposal offered.

Oh, that's right, he said his wife's millions from Wellpoint and others had no influence over him! :eyes:

[FrenchieCat]

4. The media plays along with whatever will eventually advance their agenda.....

period.

[starroute]

5. I just read a McClatchy story on Bayh that really made me sick

Read this carefully. It's claiming that the Senate has stalled out on major initiatives not because of Republican obstructionism but because Harry Reid hasn't been willing to throw the left under the bus in order to pass the pro-corporate legislation supported by Republicans and a handful of Blue Dog Democrats.

And it cites $70 billion in tax cuts for corporations -- which Reid took out of the jobs bill -- as an example of the kind of "centrist" ideas that Bayh's departure may now force the Democrats to accept.

This is so loathsome I can't even begin to characterize it properly -- but it's how the media are spinning Bahr's departure.


http://www.mcclatchydc.com/homepage/story/85440.html

Bayh's retirement blast at Congress may help break its logjam

The often dysfunctional 111th Congress got a loud wakeup call this week from retiring Sen. Evan Bayh, setting off alarms that moderates and party leaders hope will help them start to make long-sought progress on debt reduction, job creation and even health care. . . .

Lawmakers must do a better job of explaining their views on health care — and of the complexities of the legislative process — to win back public support, experts said. "You almost never get a big piece of legislation like this through in just one session of Congress," said Tripp Baird, who was a top aide to former Senate Republican leader Trent Lott of Mississippi. Bayh's comments are a reminder that to get things done, leaders have to work toward the middle, Baird said: "Just like Lott sometimes threw the right overboard, Reid has to do the same with the left." . . .

The immediate impact of Bayh's decision could be apparent next week, when the Senate is expected to vote on a $15 billion jobs package. It was originally $85 billion, and the Senate Finance Committee's top Republican and Democrat supported it. Reid pared it back, however, after hearing objections from some Senate liberals about tax breaks for business.

Bayh slammed Democrats for abandoning the bipartisan approach, and one of the Senate's most vulnerable incumbents, Sen. Blanche Lincoln, D-Ark., said she hoped that Democratic leaders would reconsider their decision on the jobs bill. "Most Americans don't honestly believe that a single political party has all the good ideas," she said. "We're not going to accomplish anything until we start governing from the center."