Dodd's Decision: To Run Or Not To Run

The Hartford Courant has another editorial, this time questioning whether Chris Dodd will run for re-election in 2010.

Five-term U.S. Sen. Christopher J. Dodd has some thinking to do. Poll numbers are dropping and potential Republican opponents are circling like sharks in the water, sensing an opportunity to end the political career of Connecticut's tarnished Democratic icon.

Mr. Dodd must decide whether to plow forward with a re-election campaign next year, one that looks increasingly problematic, or leave the Senate on his own terms. It cannot be an easy decision.

[snip]

Quinnipiac's latest polling yielded the senator's worst results ever. For the first time, more voters disapprove of Mr. Dodd's job performance than approve, and a majority say they are unlikely to support his re-election. By more than 2 to 1, respondents said they were dissatisfied with his Feb. 2 explanation of the refinancing with Countrywide. And, although 41 percent of those polled said they thought Mr. Dodd was honest and trustworthy, 42 percent said they thought he was not.

These poll results are sobering. Bad enough to make a veteran politician think hard about whether to call it a day.

I for one doubt that Dodd's ego will allow him to retire. His disastrous Presidential bid, his pompous handling of the Countrywide fiasco, his book-deal-in-the-making to write about how he saved the country from financial crisis when in fact he largely caused it; all of these things point to someone who is blind to the polls and will refuse to believe he can lose. He thinks it is HIS seat, handed down from his father, and what his constituents think doesn't really enter his mind.

This man needs to go.