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The "moderate" "centrist" "deficit hawk" had grown increasingly dissatisfied with a U.S. Senate paralyzed by partisanship. And the source of the "partisanship" was generally said to be liberals, who refused to compromise on literally every single one of their ideals and priorities.

"If I could create one job in the private sector by helping to grow a business, that would be one more than Congress has created in the last six months," he said at the time. And I guess that statement was meant to demonstrate just how hard it is to "create jobs," because after saying that, Bayh got a gig as a "senior adviser" for private equity firm Apollo Global Magement and then he followed that up by becoming a lobbyist. That is three jobs he has created, for himself, so far!

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"But there are no signs of a dramatic rebound for the party, and the chance of Republicans winning control of either chamber in the 2010 midterm elections is zero. Not 'close to zero.' Not 'slight' or 'small.' Zero."

The rest of the column is similarly embarrassing. But to be fair, no one could've predicted last spring that Barack Obama would lose the House in 2010, besides someone familiar with history

Of course, if you make political predictions for a living, you'll be wrong sometimes. Incredibly wrong. Hilariously wrong. In fact, this is not even the wrongest thing Stu Rotherberg has predicted in the last 10 years. Because in March of 2006, Rothenberg wrote a column forecasting the 2008 presidential race -- "The 2008 Race Is On - And the Field Is Smaller Than You Think" -- and one name is conspicuously missing.

A selection:

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B-b-but the deficit! Fun fact: The $100 billion Bayh and his fellow moderates stripped from the original stimulus bill is much less money than the theoretically infinite amount of money that extending tax cuts for rich people, forever, would cost. And just extending them a couple years would still be more expensive than the stimulus as originally conceived, while helping no one find work, because these tax rates have been in effect for years and they have not helped anyone find work yet.

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Check out this beauty, from Mark Halperin:

Can Obama Rebuild Bipartisan Trust in Washington?

... Despite the President's paramount campaign promise to end the bitter recriminations and partisan animus that have defined Washington politics for almost two decades, genuine feelings of friendship across the aisle rarely animate the contours of the debate in Barack Obama's Washington.

Obama once appeared exceedingly well qualified to change the tone in Washington. He came armed with his résumé of bipartisan efforts in the Illinois state senate and in Congress, his balanced, unflappable temperament and his instinctual and biographical remove from the acidic Washington ethos. And Obama seemed to believe that, fundamentally, the system needed changing. He argued that securing real solutions to the biggest challenges confronting America — health care, energy, global warming, education — required legislators and citizens of all political stripes to contribute to and endorse the programs meant to solve them. Unlike Bill Clinton, Obama didn't emphasize detailed "third way" policy ideas. Rather, he simply posited that well-meaning people of both parties could work together in good faith to find resolutions in the nation's interest.

Yet, as a candidate, Obama was never very specific about those policy ideas and was scarcely tested by the media. Once in the White House, faced with a towering heap of problems, cosseted by a Democratic majority and confronted by a hostile Republican crowd, Obama cast his lot with a legislative strategy reliant on getting overwhelming support from Democrats, at the expense of building bipartisan coalitions and forming solid relationships with the opposition.

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But is it true, as Bayh suggested, that Senate Democrats have rejected the counsel of moderates and centrists with the same partisan ferocity as the Republicans? No, it is blatantly false --and journalists who have observed the politics of the Obama administration's first year ought to have realized that instantly -- and said so.

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“Why should I be angrier?” I asked him, irritated that he hadn’t appreciated the thoughtfulness of debate.

“That’s how we get channel surfers to stop and watch the program,” the producer explained. “Eyeballs are attracted to anger.”

At this point I lost my temper.

The incident came back to me when I heard about Evan Bayh’s decision to leave Congress because he felt it was becoming too partisan. The real problem isn’t partisanship. Bold views and strong positions are fine. Democratic debate and deliberation can be enhanced by them.

The problem is the intransigence and belligerence that has taken over Congress and much of the rest of the public — a profound distrust of people “on the other side,” an unwillingness to compromise, a bitterness and anger disproportionate to issues being discussed.

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Petitions were due at noon Tuesday to qualify for the election for the Senate seat that Evan Bayh has suddenly decided he doesn't want anymore. D'Ippolito, who had been the only other Democrat running against Bayh, presented a potentially serious problem for the party: She had very few resources, very little experience and was unlikely to pose much of an obstacle to whichever Republican wins the GOP nomination. But if she had managed to qualify for the ballot, she would have been the Democratic nominee, since no one else would have made it into the primary.

In order to qualify, though, d'Ippolito needed to turn in petitions with valid signatures from 500 voters in each of the state's nine congressional districts. And in Marion County, the home of Indianapolis, which encompasses the entire 7th Congressional District, she turned in a grand total of two signatures.

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In recent months, the bottom seems to have fallen out of the electoral prospects of the Democratic caucus in the Senate. Polls from across the country show Democratic challengers falling behind lackluster opponents, once-safe senators struggling and open seats that the party may not even be able to contest. The new vacancy in Indiana is just one more major headache for the already beleaguered majority.

It’s been clear for some time that Democrats would lose seats in the Senate this November. But --for all the good it's done them -- they do have a rather overwhelming majority, and it’s been widely assumed that come next year, they'd still be in control. Does the conventional wisdom need some rethinking? Pundits, at least, demand to know.

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It was 30 years ago that Bayh, then a 24-year-old law school student, helped run the re-election campaign of his father, Senator Birch Bayh. An unrepentant liberal with national aspirations (he'd run for president in 1976), the elder Bayh was targeted by a then-emerging network of "New Right" activists and fundraisers, who pilloried him as a big spender and slammed his support for abortion rights, gay rights and school busing.

As expedient as it might have been, Birch Bayh refused to back down from his principles in that campaign, an honorable stand that hastened his demise. On Election Day, he was defeated -- handily. By Dan Quayle. At 52, his political career was over.

His son, it seems, was taking notes.

Evan Bayh inherited all of his father's drive for national office but none of his progressive backbone. From his father's defeat, he seemed to draw a lesson: You can dream big dreams if you're a Democrat from Indiana -- you just can't be proud to be a Democrat. And that has been the defining principle (to the extent there's been one) in Evan Bayh's quarter-century political career, which began with a successful 1986 campaign for secretary of state in Indiana and which now may be ending, with his stunning decision to exit the Senate after two terms.

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Bayh, a moderate who has often infuriated progressives by insisting on frequent compromises with Republicans, was first elected in 1998. He nearly ran for the Democratic nomination for president in 2008, but pulled out of the race in 2006 and later endorsed Hillary Clinton. Republicans had been targeting him in November, but a recent poll found Bayh comfortably ahead of two potential challengers, including former Sen. Dan Coats, the GOP establishment's choice for the race. Bayh had nearly $13 million in the bank at the end of the year.

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But the public airing of his dirty laundry (including, most damningly, a video of Coats declaring his desire to move to North Carolina), has clearly weakened his prospects, equipping Democrats with months of attack ad material. More importantly, it's raised a question that seemed laughable when he first emerged as a candidate last week: Can he survive the Republican primary?

Coats is the favorite of his party's establishment, but that doesn't guarantee a politician much these days. (Just ask Charlie Crist.)  And, in fact, there's already at least one other credible GOP candidate looming -- a candidate who can now beat Coats over the head with the past week's revelations.

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The biggest difference between the two events, obviously, was the lack of a partisan divide this time around. Because of that, the president's chat with the Senate Democrats turned into, essentially, a dog-and-pony show. It seemed mostly like a chance for the caucus to get vulnerable members some valuable camera time.

Nearly all of those who questioned Obama, in fact, are up for re-election this year, and facing tough fights. The only exceptions were Vermont Sen. Pat Leahy and Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown  -- and you can make a case that Brown, too, was a choice made with a nod to electoral politics, as a Republican-held seat in his state is coming open, and the race will be competitive. The rest of the questions went to Sens. Evan Bayh, Kirsten Gillibrand, Blanche Lincoln and Arlen Specter, and of course Majority Leader Harry Reid, who's in a tough spot of his own, got his time in the spotlight, too. 

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But now Bayh once again has reason to be nervous. Former Sen. Dan Coats -- who opted not to run again in 1998, when then-Gov. Bayh got into the race and eventually won -- has reportedly signed on as the Republicans' challenger to the incumbent.

Coats isn't a lock, by any means; indeed, one of his potential vulnerabilities has already been exposed. But this is even more reason for Democrats to be nervous about this fall's midterms.

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As things stand right now, it seems just about impossible to believe that the Republicans will take back the Senate in November. But it's likely they'll take a sizable chunk out of the Democrats.

From the 59 seats the Democrats currently hold, you can almost certainly subtract at least three: In addition to the vice-president's old seat, North Dakota Sen. Byron Dorgan's retirement all but gives his to the GOP, and Arkansas Sen. Blanche Lincoln seems doomed. That takes them down to 56. Then there's a very big name who, according to recent polling -- and FiveThirtyEight.com's Nate Silver -- seems like he's about to have some more time to spend with his family: Majority Leader Harry Reid. That's 55.

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The question, then, is what will happen once the results are official. If, as expected, Brown wins, Democrats will be down to 59 seats in the Senate, one short of being able to break a GOP filibuster on healthcare reform. That will, by itself, pose all sorts of challenges. But then there's the issue of where the party goes politically from here.

The White House seems to have its approach figured out: "President Barack Obama plans a combative response" in that case, Politico's Mike Allen reports. He quotes an unnamed presidential advisor as saying, "The response will not be to do incremental things and try to salvage a few seats in the fall. The best political route also happens to be the boldest rhetorical route, which is to go out and fight and let the chips fall where they may. We can say, ‘At least we fought for these things, and the Republicans said no.’"

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Secondly, here is the segment I did last night with Rachel Maddow on the personal benefits received from large health care and pharmaceutical corporations by Joe Lieberman and Evan Bayh as a result of their servitude to those industries; my participation begins at roughly the 5:00 mark of the clip:

Finally, here is a segment I did this morning on Ratigan's show with Eliot Spitzer regarding the ongoing Wall Street abuses and the government's ever-expanding acquiescence to them:

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As just one notable example, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid recently said that he can't "dictate how people vote" in the Democratic Senate caucus and that "We have 60 votes on paper ... But we cannot bulldoze anybody."

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