Because Bayh is an epic fail Fake Democrat.
I'll take him over 90% of Democrats any day.
Of course. You're a Moderate Hero Fake Democrat just like he is.
He and I are the real Democrats.
Um, who defines that? If the vast majority of Democrats are more liberal than you are, then on what basis are center-right Dems "real Democrats"?
I'm not calling for you or other centrists to leave the party - far from it - I'm all for a big tent, and given demographic realities and our political system, Democrats need to be.*
I'm just saying it's extremely irritating with centrist Dems like Bayh and Joe Lieberman claim that they represent the "real" wing of the party.
And, btw, I criticize ardent left-wingers too for claiming they're "real Democrats," when they're just as much (if not more of) a minority in the party as the center-right Democrats are.
(*Conservatives have a structural advantage in both the House and the Senate; in the Senate, it's obvious, since small, mostly conservative states elect the same number of senators as large, liberal states. But it's true in the House too, since Democrats are concentrated in highly urban, largely one-party districts. Republicans are spread more thinly, meaning that there are generally more conservative-leaning districts than liberal-leaning ones; hence, any Democratic majority is going to, by necessity, be more heterogenous than a Republican one.)