Marchand bows out, but will Senator Stevens finally exit the stage too?

Today brought news that one of the three Democratic candidates already in the race for the NH Senate seat is bowing out because of Jeanne Shaheen's entrance. Marchand had already indicated he probably would, but then had backed down from his comments. His exit leaves Swett and Buckley in the primary race, but they are likely to be pressured by state and national Democrats to get out as well. Swett has always been disliked by Democratic activists as Lieberman-lite.

But it now seems that many progressives are embracing Buckley as an alternative to the much more moderate Shaheen. Chris Bowers writes an excellent post on OpenLeft summarizing his bitterness at the developments in the NH Senate race. He writes,

Even if he stays in, I am under no particular illusions that Buckey would have anything more than a moonshot to actually defeat Shaheen in the primary. However, to be perfectly frank, I feel like Shaheen is one of the many, many Democrats who first helped lead the party into simultaneous minority and pro-war status back in 2002-2003, but who is now capitalizing on the favorable electoral stage that was prepared mainly by the progressive movement during four years of intense guerilla warfare against conservatism from 2003-2006. While the Jean Shaheen's and Rahm Emanual's of the party were supporting things like the Bush tax cuts, the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq, and legislation to support Terry Schaivo, it was the netroots who were doing the bulk of the heavy lifting in opposition to Republicans. I feel like they are capitalizing on what we rightfully earned, and both dissing us and preparing to destroy all of our work in the process. They are pretenders to the new Democratic majority.

And among other Senate news, here is the new favorite question of political junkies: How much more has to come out before Senator Stevens calls it quits? Bill Allen, Vaco Corp's ex-CEO testified in court yesterday that he bribed three Alaska legislators including Ted Stevens's son! Senator Stevens has also been under investigation for his links with VECO -- as the FBI raid on his house a few weeks ago stunningly revealed! To make matters much much worse, Allen admitted to one of the main allegations against Stevens, namely that VECO employees had worked on a very costly remodeling project of that raided house. Stevens is still not in electoral danger as Alaska is reliably Republican and there is no Democrat to take him on -- but at what point is too much? If Anchorage mayor Begich were to jump in the race, this contest could become top-tier overnight.