THE LEFT WILL MISS MICHELE BACHMANN

Early last Wednesday morning, Rep. Michele Bachmann announced that she will not seek re-election in 2014.  Reactions, to say the least, were mixed.  At National Review, Michael Walsh provided some negative perspective while Kathryn Jean Lopez extolled some of Bachmann's virtues.

That same day, MinnPost reported:

Bachmann seemed prepared to run for re-election to her House seat in 2014, raising nearly $700,000 during the first three months of 2013 and actively seeking more from her deep small-dollar donor base, especially after Graves announced his second challenge to her. She even purchased a round of television ads after the House passed her bill to repeal the Affordable Care Act on May 16, an usually early ad buy for a congressional candidate.

But there were strong indications that, after her narrow victory in 2012, national Democrats would redouble their efforts against Bachmann next year. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee had indicated it would help Graves, and liberal superPACs were lining up to challenge Bachmann's candidacy.

"I think that she’s read the tea leaves," Graves told KARE 11 Wednesday morning. He said he thinks voters in the 6th District are looking for someone with business experience who understands the economy.

"Nothing really changes at all for our messaging," he said. "We were running for the people, not against Michele Bachmann anyway."

The day after the announcement, Tom Steward captured the real significance of Bachmann's impending exit from elective politics (for now, anyway):

Michele Bachmann’s announcement that she won't run for re-election in 2014 may hurt Democrats who hoped to use her rocky political record against her in that congressional race.

In an eight minute video released yesterday, the Minnesota congresswoman insisted that early polls showing a tight race and a federal investigation into her 2012 presidential campaign did not factor into her decision.

"Be assured, my decision was not in any way influenced by any concerns about my being re-elected to Congress," Bachmann said on the video. "I've always in the past defeated candidates who are capable, qualified and well-funded, and I have every confidence that if I ran, I would again defeat the individual who I defeated last year."

The controversial four-term congresswoman's abrupt withdrawal from the state and national stage will leave a void in the media and legislative arenas that political observers on both sides agree will be hard to fill.

Jim Graves

On Friday, Graves announced that he was planning to "indefinitely suspend" his campaign for Congress from the 6th District.  Which means he is no longer running for the office. He is dropping out of politics to concentrate on his family and his business.  

He's smart enough to understand that the national media, the DNC and the national liberal-donor base are going to be a lot less interested in who represents the 6th District of Minnesota now that Bachmann has removed herself. Nevertheless, despite his comments earlier in the week, claiming that it wasn't about Bachmann, Graves couldn't resist the pathetic urge to try and take credit for her decision:

"Basically, after all that's gone on, and with Michele Bachmann now stepping down, I've been talking to my friends and family and frankly, the feeling is, 'Mission Accomplished.' She wasn't representing the people of the 6th District appropriately, and now she won't be representing them. There's no way anyone could run and win who would be worse than Michele Bachmann. So we accomplished that task."

Whatever.