Our Eric Kleefeld has spent the morning trying to make heads or tails of what’s going down in Indiana. Thing are still a bit hazy, but it looks like Democrats have avoided ending up with a political unknown as their nominee to succeed Evan Bayh in the U.S. Senate. 
 
 Today is the deadline for prospective candidates for the Democratic primary to file with each county clerk the petitions required by law in order to appear on the ballot. Earlier this morning Tamyra d’Ippolito — calling her a longshot is probably too generous — told us she already had all the signatures she needed to qualify. But shortly thereafter she told Greg Sargent that she didn’t really have them but she would have them by the noon deadline. 
 
 Around that time, the state Democratic Party chairman, Dan Parker — a close Bayh ally, it should be noted — told us d’Ippolito wasn’t even close to having enough signatures to qualify. By his count, she had 22 signatures filed statewide, out of the 4,500 the law requires. 
 
 Just now, after the noon filing deadline passed, Eric checked in with the clerk in Marion County — the largest county in the state, where Indianapolis is located, which contains an entire congressional district. Indiana’s qualifying law, like many state’s, is byzantine. One requirement is that you have to have at least 500 signatures from each congressional district. The clerk tells us that d’Ippolito has filed a total of two signatures from residents of the congressional district wholly within Marion County. 
 
 That would seem to end the d’Ippolito boomlet — fueled partly by conservatives looking to cause trouble for Democrats — before it even began, but we’re still confirming the particulars. 
 
 But we’re not out of the woods yet when it comes to obscure election rules because now the selection of a Democratic nominee is in the hands of state party officials. 

 And the Bloomington Democrat's 15 minutes appear to have ended. She turned in just three of the 500 signatures required in one of nine congressional districts, which disqualifies her, demonstrating the limits of last-minute, disorganized blog and Twitter posts in getting people to participate in tactical political mischief. (Reminds me a bit of the so-called Limbaugh effect actually — there's little evidence people actually act like this.) 
 
 Also, an NBC official e-mails to contest the candidate's theory that she was bumped from Rachel Maddow's show last night for nefarious reasons, saying that instead NBC chose to do a broader segment on Bayh's retirement. 
 
 "I think you can guess that Rachel doesn't really have a tight connection with the 'machine' politics of the Indiana Democratic Party," the official said.
– Democrats nearly had another political disaster on their hands thanks to Evan Bayh, writes David Kurtz. They got lucky, however, when a no-name cafe owner failed to come up with enough signatures by today's deadline to represent Democrats in the primary. Now that Tamyra d'Ippolito is out of the picture—even though she claimed to have the signatures earlier in the day—party officials in Indiana will be able to place a more seasoned candidate on the ballot. The development "would seem to end the d'Ippolito boomlet—fueled partly by conservatives looking to cause trouble for Democrats—before it even began, but we're still confirming the particulars," writes Kurtz at Talking Points Memo. The would-be candidate raised eyebrows when she accused the party "machine" of getting her bumped from Rachel Maddow's show. An NBC official responds to Ben Smith at Politico: "I think you can guess that Rachel doesn't really have a tight connection with the 'machine' politics of the Indiana Democratic Party."