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Medford, MA just north of Boston is a blue city in a blue state, a middle-class college town that's home to our parents' alma mater, Tufts University. Local resident Martha Coakley won the burg but lost the Commonwealth to Scott Brown in January's special election, and Rep. Ed Markey maintains a local office there. It's just down the pike from us here in Chelsea, so we stopped by Markey's local headquarters Tuesday morning to drop off a letter to the Congressman — the same one we'd snail-mailed and e-mailed our own Rep Michael Capuano the other day — and do a little sign waving to motorists passing through the busy intersection of High, Main and Salem Streets, our on-the-ground contribution to the People's Surge against Obamacare 2.0.

Most of the drive-bys were not interested or not amused, but the occasional enthusiastic honker and wielder of thumbs kept our Tea-Party juices flowing.

As with phone banking for Brown to get out the vote in January, the best part of political activism for us has been getting to shmooze with wonderful folks of like mind. There were only two other stalwart Tea-Party types besides Tuck and ourselves and a passing mailman (see below) on Tuesday, but we few formed a multitude.

Best exchange of the day: Local mailman says "honk, honk, honk" in solidarity as he approaches on foot and stops to share his fervent disgust at the prospect of a government takeover of 17 percent of the nation's economy. Best quote of the day: "The only reason I voted for McCain was because Sarah was on the ticket."

At one point we ventured inside the Congressman's offices to deliver our letter and a small piece of our mind to a couple of carnival barkers pair of talking-point-programmed apparatchiks who kept interrupting us. No minds were changed, but at least we had a little fun making the two aides squirm a bit. According to Wikipedia, "Markey is speculated to be one of the leading Democratic candidates to challenge Brown in the 2012 election, and according to today's Boston Herald:

Rep. Edward Markey (D-Malden) said yesterday he’s leaning toward supporting the bill, but won’t officially make up his mind until he sees final language of the bill and how it will be voted upon.

In other words, he won't make up his mind until he sees which way the wind is blowing or succumbs to the President's powers of "persuasion."

"Two dozen protesters picketed … in downtown Manchester carrying signs telling Congress to stop scaring people and to leave health care alone … Security pulled a Londonderry man out of the forum for continually interrupting Shea-Porter and others," the Union-Leader reported on clueless NH Congresswoman Carol Shea-Porter's out-of-control town hall meeting last summer. Now she's up for re-election in the wake of the Brown Revolution and fleeing her constituents for a posh fundraiser in Boston with Nancy Pelosi tomorrow at The Liberty Hotel (above), "as it is now ironically known," a 300-room luxury hotel retrofitted into the historic Charles Street Jail.

"The unifying message is opposition to Mr. Obama's dependency agenda and Washington's grab for more money and power," say the WSJ editors in "A Tale of Two Governors." But "framing the election as one of insiders vs. outsiders misses the real point," adds Investor's Business Daily:

Perry's victory shows that voters want conservatives — real ones, non-compromisers — and leaders with track records. That's who's winning elections now.

Meanwhile Democrat leaders, in a mood to ram unwanted things down the nation's throat — because, as the president, flanked by men and women in white coats, assured us with a straight face yesterday "I don't know how this plays politically, but I know it's right" — seem determined to take no prisoners, including their own cannon fodder foot soldiers. Which brings us to the Nancy Pelosi Suicide Watch. The Speaker's coming to Bean Town tomorrow to raise funds for Carol Shea-Porter, the sad little sack of a New Hampshire Congresswoman who famously gave one of her own constituents a personal police escort out of a Manchester town hall meeting last August because she couldn't handle dissent. The Union Leader reports:

State GOP spokesman Ryan Williams said Shea-Porter's campaign is "sputtering," and, "Nancy will do anything to keep one of her most loyal sock puppets in the Congress."

"This is a nice reward for Shea-Porter's unwavering loyalty to Nancy Pelosi's tax-and-spend agenda," added the National Republican Congressional Committee.

Former Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta is a good listener, says Granite Stater Amy Kane (see below). He's challenging Pelosi pick Rep. Carol Shea-Porter for NH 01. Photo from Guinta's Facebook page. He tweets too, but not enough. We'll have to nudge him about that. He might turn out to be one of the "strategic small-government candidates, not parties" we'll be supporting this election season.

A Martha Coakley moment for those whose ears are deaf to the vox populi? Ask Shea-Porter challenger, former Manchester Mayor Frank Guinta, "calm, respectful, and good at letting people have their say," in the words of Granite Stater and fellow tea partier/blogger/good friend Amy Kane. She had the scoop the day after Shea-Porter's disastrous town hall. Nancy Pelosi and friends still don't get it, but "That's who's winning elections now."

Ed Morrissey has more, including a toe-curling video clip featuring constituents groaning at Shea-Porter's proud boast of a 90% "rating" with the president: "How not to run for Congress, 2010 version."

Update: Video (h/t Amy Kane): "Shea-Porter sneaks into fundraiser with Pelosi via backdoor."

Update II: Amy Kane links with a fun and funny post of her own:

Shea-Porter who, prior to her election in 2008, served as a rowdy townhall-disrupting, waffle-hat-making, war-protesting, "Turn Your Back On Bush" t-shirt-wearing grassroots activist and community organizer, slipped in the back door of the Liberty Hotel to avoid a group of demonstrators protesting spending and the health care bill.

“My decision should not be interpreted for more than it is, a very difficult, deeply personal one," Indiana Sen Evan Bayh told the nation Monday as he announced he would not run for re-election next November. (Getty Images photo)

"One other reason that this story never goes anywhere is that Bayh's image here in Indiana is as clean as can be," writes HoosierHawk in the comments to our previous post, making the case that some Indiana voters who may have supported Senator Bayh in the past are anti-incumbent this year not because of any perceived appearance of impropriety on the part of Susan Bayh but because they are realizing their man in Washington doesn't walk the walk:

I had been planning on campaigning hard against Bayh this election (as I did against his father), but Susan Bayh's being on several corporate boards had nothing to do with it …

You can make the case that he is too liberal or whatever, but convincing Hoosiers that Bayh is corrupt would be a steep uphill climb.

It must be realized that when Bayh is in Indiana, he talks a good conservative line, but then he goes to Washington and votes the liberal party line. Hoosiers listened to his talk, and weren't really aware of his votes.

Once there were exactly 60 votes and important issues were being voted on, we could tell how Bayh was voting. The media reported on the few senators who were crossing over and determining the outcomes, it wasn't ever Bayh.

We heard him putting out the blue dog moderate democrat talking points, but every vote was with the Libs. Bayh lost his "moderate" cover story and got flushed out into open. Hoosiers wanted the admin's agenda stopped, and Bayh wasn't doing it.

Echoing commenter HoosierHawk's on-the-ground assessment, the editors of Investors Business Daily put things in larger context:

Bayh doesn't fit in Middle America.

Don't "bayh" too much of the line that Hoosier State's junior senator, whose father was a liberal senator who ran for president in 1976, chose not to run for re-election because of disgust with all the partisanship in Washington …

Pushing past the prettifications, the main reason Bayh will be leaving the Senate is that he can't get re-elected in Indiana. Like liberal Democratic Sens. Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota, Bayh has read the writing on the wall, and the color of the ink is a distinct Brown — as in Sen. Scott Brown, the Republican newly elected to the Senate from Massachusetts.

If only politicians — on both sides of the aisle — and their allies in academia and the media could remember the past, maybe they wouldn't be condemned to repeat it. Ronald Reagan laid it all out in a 1977 "pep talk about how the GOP loss would only be temporary if they learned from the party's mistakes and returned to first principles," as John Fund reminds us in "Why Bayh is Quitting the Senate":

Conservatives, [Reagan] said, should be of good cheer. Democrats win the White House when they campaign as moderates, but once in office they find it impossible to do so even if they want to "because the unions and their Congressional leadership won't let them."

But governing as liberals meant Democrats undermined the trust voters placed in them. They also enacted policies that increased economic uncertainty and retarded job creation. "When liberalism fails, people notice. They may even protest," Reagan told his aides, pointing to California's nascent Proposition 13 tax revolt — the "Tea Party" of its day. "And it's then they'll listen to you again if you have a clear set of ideas based on sound principle."

Once again, as we've done early and often from the start of our Great Tea Party Adventure last winter, we thank you, President Obama, for awakening the "forgotten man" in time to save the Shining City Upon a Hill.

We just noticed someone from Susan-Bayh-connected public relations powerhouse APCO Worldwide (DC HQ) lurking in our Site Meter stats this afternoon checking out our latest Instalinked post, "It's not the people's seat, it's the Bayh seat!" According to SourceWatch, APCO describes itself as a "global communication consultancy" specializing in "influencing decisionmakers and shaping public opinion by crafting compelling messages and recruiting effective allies."

"It's nothing new to the Hoosier blogosphere, but a big story in the Fort Wayne Journal Gazette has brought public attention to and focused new light on the shady dealings of Evan Bayh and his wife," wrote The Hoosierpundit blogger back in December of 2007. In the wake of all the excitement and speculation over Sen Bayh's abrupt announcement yesterday that he would not run for reelection next November, we googled "bayh scandal" just for fun and stumbled upon this gem of a potential troublemaker for an incumbent running in a Tea-Party-fueled, throw-the-bums-out election year:

Susan Bayh, as you may or may not know, has as her primary occupation sitting on the boards of directors of companies that her husband frequently votes in the Senate to impact.

Unsurprisingly, it's very lucrative to sit on the board of directors of some big company, and more lucrative still when your husband is voting in ways that can favorably benefit the juicy stock options that you are about to exercise.

Given that there have already been ethics complaints about this brought before a United States District Court, it is actually rather surprising (and conspicuously unsettling) that this hasn't gotten any press at all in Indiana much sooner.

This being said, since it has already been swept under the rug once before when it came before an actual court, I am highly skeptical that this story will manage to grow legs this time around.

A Muckety.com search for "susan bayh apco" shows a connection between the Senator's wife and APCO via Wellpoint Inc and Donald W. Riegle Jr of Keating Five fame, APCO Worldwide chairman of government affairs. Corruptocrats never step down. They just change job descriptions. According to Wikipedia, "On behalf of the tobacco industry and other corporate clients, [APCO Worldwide] has created a number of industry front groups … and many state and local branches of Citizens Against Lawsuit Abuse, or CALAs, which are fake grassroots groups that agitate for tort reform." Nothing wrong with that. They all do it, right? Not unrelatedly, some chatterers are suggesting Sen Bayh may be headed for K Street when he leaves Capitol Hill.

Bayh attributed his decision to disenchantment with Congressional gridlock, and who are we to not take him at his word? Still, given the current clean-out-the-Augean-Stables political climate and our desire to get a glimpse of what's really going on behind the curtain, are we entering crackpot territory to suggest that concerns about the viability of those twice-suppressed ethical questions may have figured in the Senator's decision to lie low for awhile until political winds shift?

Related: WaPo's The Fix handicaps "Winners and losers from Evan Bayh's retirement" and concludes "it takes what would have been a competitive seat where Democrats were favored and turns it into a competitive seat where Republicans are favored."

Update: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds.

Update II: Someone from APCO top client Philip Morris USA drops by.

"Congress needs to listen, and the American people need to help with this process," Sen Evan Bayh told George Stephanopoulous yesterday, attempting to misdirect viewers' attention from what was going on behind the politics-as-usual curtain. If we can believe what we read — not to mention our lying eyes — listening to the American people was the last thing on the minds of Indiana and DC powerbrokers maneuvering to get their favored candidate in place for next fall's election.

"Evan Bayh may have been a moderate, but he was still a Democrat to the end," writes a leery-eyed Dan Riehl re the Indiana Senator's attempted "coup" in "unexpectedly" announcing his retirement one day before the filing deadline. Politico explains:

The idea was that no Democrat would qualify for the primary ballot, and the party’s state central committee could tap their favored candidate.

The "central committee" quashing the vox populi? We're shocked, shocked. They may not get away with it, though. Liberal contender Tamyra D'Ippolito is scrambling under the wire to get the necessary signatures, and Republicans are "expected to call for Bayh to support an extension," notes Dan. Put this final bit from The Daily Caller in the category of we record, you decide (don't know enough about it to know, but we do know a bit about human nature and Rahm Emanuel's take-no-prisoners modus operandi):

Hoosier politics took an unexpected turn Monday night when Democratic Senate candidate Tamyra d’Ippolito accused the White House of conspiring with party officials to secretly draft Rep. Baron Hill to run against her …

"Don't you find that strange, Rahm Emanuel coming to Indiana"? she asked, adding that Emanuel was sent by the White House to "find a blue dog to put into power."

[S]he was informed Monday that Hill, a blue dog who represents Indiana’s 9th District in the House, already has the necessary signatures and is sitting on them until the deadline. She accused White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel of colluding with Hill and the Democratic party county chairs to secretly supplant her as the nominee.

"Fortunately, two can play at Rahm Emanuel's 'never-let-a-crisis-go-to-waste' game," we wrote on the eve of our very first Tea Party last March, quoting from an earlier February post, "Santelli reads the tea leaves": "Thank you, Mr. President, for your assist in awakening the forgotten man."

However things work out, it's pretty clear the Indiana powerbrokers didn't hear Scott Brown and the voters of Massachusetts January 19. Turning Brown's Kennedy-vs-the-people's-seat rallying cry on its head, they betray their business-as-usual belief that it's not the people's seat, it's the Bayh seat!

Update: Instalanche! Thank you, Professor Reynolds.