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Mr. Mellencamp Goes to Washington?

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Singer's not likely to run for Senate seat, but Dems love his appeal

In the wake of Evan Bayh's decision not to seek another term as a senator from Indiana, you could call it a sign of Democrats' dire need that some activists have launched a movement to draft singer John Mellencamp as a replacement candidate. But you could just as easily call it a sign of just how much Mellencamp would be a wild card that conservative commentators immediately and derisively cast Mellencamp as a lefty, even though he's shown not one iota of interest in the seat.

In a year in which driving around in a pickup truck has become a campaign statement, it's not hard to see why there's all the fuss.

Last week, film critic Roger Ebert, progressive bloggers, the editor of the Nation and even a former Senate aide to Bayh's father, Birch, floated the prospect of Mellencamp as a new kind of Mr. Smith. Mellencamp, a resident of Bloomington, Ind., not only has instant name recognition but, better yet, Heartland appeal.

John McCain's 2008 campaign even took to playing his song, “Our Country," at campaign rallies, despite it's being essentially a progressive populist tune. Mellencamp's reps asked McCain's campaign to stop using it, for good reason: The singer supported and campaigned for John Edwards in the primary and for Barack Obama in the general election.

Mellencamp also has a track record of activism as one of the founders of Farm Aid and taking a very public stand against the U.S. invasion of Iraq in 2003.

So all that's missing is the will of the man himself. Mellencamp has not commented, but he did respond to previous efforts to get him to run for governor. “I sleep until 11 in the morning and stay up till 3," he told Blender magazine in 2007. “I don't think the legislature could keep my hours."

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