Chris Dodd announces he will not seek Re-election

  Chris Dodd is going to  hold a press conference later on today in which he is expected to announce that he will not seek re-election. This news comes directly on the heels of the announcement by another longtime Democrat senator, Byron Dorgon, that he will not seek re-election.

  Chris Dodd was in trouble, he faced a very tough re-election bid, his sweetheart mortgage deal from beleaguered Countrywide Mortgage did not help him in the eyes of his constituents. He looks be leaving the senate in order to let a more popular Democrat candidate run in his place thereby giving the Democrats a better chance at keeping his seat.

  But there is another aspect of these two recent announcements that I want to take a look at. In the last 24 hours we have had two longtime Democrat senators announce that they will not run for re-election.

  This is a time when Democrats should be riding high; they have what should be an unstoppable 60 vote super majority in the senate and an overwhellming majority in the House, but yet they just cannot get united on the issues.

  They have not been able to unite on healthcare and cap and trade, and they certainly can’t unite behind the president’s inept, uncaring response to the two terrorist attacks that have happened on United States soil. At a time when the Democrats should be more united than ever, the fissures are growing in the party and they are actually pulling farther apart than they ever were.

    But then something else struck me, because the Democrats have been united for so long, something had to have changed. And what changed is this; they no longer have the opposition of George Bush to united behind. The Democrats were united in their opposition to George Bush and now that he is gone and they are in power, they are finding it much harder to legislate than it is to just stand in opposition. They no longer have that single issue that they can all agree upon and because of this they are getting nothing done.

   With the election coming up later this year Democrats are looking out for themselves and their best interests; they have not been able to unite behind Barack Obama because the American people are growing dissatisfied with his radical agenda, and they cannot run against George Bush again.

  So in a time when it should be the easiest to be a Democrat in congress, when they should be able to easily pass their agenda, they are struggling. They are struggling and their poll numbers are dropping and because of this we have two longtime Democrats who will not run for re-election.

  If things were going as smoothly for the Democrats as they should be at this point, this would not be happening, but they are frustrated and they are growing demoralized.