OK, this might be a bogus report, but the Politico mentioned Blue Dog Jim Cooper as a possible replacement for Daschle.

But some potential replacements for Daschle could include former Vermont Gov. and DNC Chair Howard Dean, Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen, Kansas Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, former Oregon Gov. John Kitzhaber and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-Tenn.)

Digby writes about the media's suck up to Cooper's foray into the health care debate under Clinton:

Jim Cooper is an enemy of universal health care. He will, however, work to ensure that the insurance industry and the Big Pharma gets more of your tax dollars.

Read this report and weep.

The country cannot afford another giveaway to Big Insurance and Pharma and desperately needs a complete overhaul of the system in order to get costs into line and get people covered. This recession is going to end up making more than 50 million people without health insurance, very possibly more than that. Many more are terribly underinsured. Obama cannot put some slimy Blue Dog opportunist in charge of it.

Make sure to read Digby's entire post. I Like Howard Dean very much and hope he gets the job, but what Obama cannot do is appoint fraking Blue Dogs to help pass Universal Health Care. It's going to be a tough fight even if Americans voted in Obama to do exactly that. You can be sure that the media will adopt right wing talking points and feature members from the conservatives in Congress and Gingrich types to set the tone to help defeat universal health care. The economic stimulus debate so far has been a primer for what's to come.

It didn't take Blue Dog Jim Cooper too long to betray President Obama. What, eight days or so. Barack Obama started using Cooper last February for health care during the primary and Mike Lux issued a huge warning.

My concerns shifted into overdrive, though, when I noticed that the Obama campaign is now using Rep. Jim Cooper as a spokesperson/surrogate on health care.

I was part of the Clinton White House team on the health care reform issue in 1993/94, and no Democrat did more to destroy our chances in that fight than Jim Cooper. We had laid down a marker very early that we thought universal coverage was the most essential element to getting a good package, saying we were to happy to negotiate over the details but that universality was our bottom line.

Cooper, a leader of conservative Dems on the health care issue, instead of working with us, came out early and said universality was unimportant, and came out with a bill that did almost nothing in terms of covering the uninsured. He quickly became the leading spokesman on the Dem side for the insurance industry position, and undercut us at every possible opportunity, basically ending any hopes we had for a unified Democratic Party position. I was never so delighted to see a Democrat lose as when he went down in the 1994 GOP tide. Unfortunately, he came back, like a bad penny.

It is such a huge mistake for Obama to use a guy like this to defend their position on health care...read on

How did he betray President Obama you ask?

From Kagro:

Special "F. You" Note: To Blue Dog Jim Cooper (D-TN-05), who back in December extracted from the Obama team the promise of the convening of a "fiscal responsibility summit," which he wanted to be included in the stimulus. Instead, Obama agreed two weeks in advance of the stimulus vote to convene such a summit in February, and I said Obama should have waited to see that Cooper and the Blue Dogs pony up on the stimulus before agreeing.

Well, Obama didn't wait, and Cooper (and five other Blue Dogs) didn't show. What a surprise.

There's still time to disinvite them, of course. Think that'll happen?

Jim Cooper voted against the stimulus plan.

(h/t Hullabaloo)