When Democratic Indiana Sen. Evan Bayh announced he was leaving the U.S. Senate in 2010, a lot of progressives were not sad to see him go.
Now that Bayh is back running for his old seat, feelings toward him have not changed.
Bayh made a show of announcing why he was leaving in 2010 after serving two terms, complaining of rigid partisanship in a New York Times op-ed. The View co-host Joy Behar snapped at him for quitting when he came on the show to discuss his exit. Once looked at as a potential vice presidential pick in 2008, Bayh was later hit from the Left for criticizing Obamacare and railing against the medical device tax.
Liberal comedian Bill Maher said "good riddance" in 2010 when discussing the news of Bayh’s departure with Larry King.
"They keep saying he’s a centrist. He’s not," Maher said. "He’s a corporatist ... The reason why Congress doesn’t work is because of Democrats like him."
MSNBC host Rachel Maddow was beside herself on Election Day in 2010 as the news came in that Sen. Dan Coats (R., Ind.) had won the seat vacated by Bayh. Arguing Bayh knew he was one of the only Democrats who could have held his seat that year and bailed anyway, Maddow said he had re-invented himself as a pundit who "talks smack about Democrats."
"The Democrats are going to miss Evan Bayh’s Senate seat in Indiana," Maddow said. "I cannot believe they are going to miss Evan Bayh."
She added that he had accomplished nothing legislatively in two terms of a seat he inherited from his father, Birch Bayh.
When Bayh left, he said there were other ways he could be of public service, and in that vein he went on to become a corporate lobbyist and Fox News contributor. Left-wing The Young Turks host Cenk Uygur went off on him when he was hired by Fox in 2011, saying he was as "big a corporate tool" as one could ever have found in the U.S. Senate. Previously on MSNBC, Uygur said Bayh was a "joke and corporate hack."
Author Mark Leibovich tabbed him as an example of a Washington figure more focused on "self-service" than public service in his dishy D.C. insider book This Town.
"He immediately joined the Chamber of Commerce. He got a pundit’s gig on Fox," Leibovich said during an interview about his book. "He joined all these boards."
Bayh announced this week that he would run for his old seat after all, a surprising turn that oddsmakers said put Indiana in play for a Democratic pick-up. Democrats are attempting to regain the majority in the Senate after losing it in 2014. Former Rep. Baron Hill (D., Ind.) won the state’s primary but withdrew this week in favor of Bayh, who also is sitting on a more-than $9 million war chest.
Maddow covered the news on her eponymous MSNBC show Monday, describing Bayh as a "Joe Lieberman-style conservative Democrat" who was not "everyone’s cup of tea."