Doodles, We Hardly Knew Yah. Hello Dick Blumenthal!!!!!

Overnight, after the Washington Post first reported that Chris Dodd won’t seek re-election, Attorney General Dick Blumenthal, who has coveted a US Senate seat for years and was plainly set to run when Joe Lieberman reached his dead end in 2012, just won a two-year reprieve and can easily win the seat this fall. That opens up a bit of a Democratic log jam, tempting folks like Susan Bysiewicz and George Jepsen to run for AG. Blumenthal is consistently the state’s highest vote-getter and should have no problem with either Linda McMahon’s steroid-fueled millions, or Rob Simmons policy wonkdom, depending on who gets the GOP nomination.

In the end, Doodles (who earned his nickname among certain members of the Connecticut Press Corps when he was a free-wheeling bachelor) couldn’t overcome his horrible poll numbers, fueled by the nation’s economic crisis that was budding during his ego-filled attempt to become president. The irony is Dodd is now at the height of his effectiveness in Washington. It’s a long fall from grace for a “friend of Angelo” and the Countrywide mortgage deal that helped his popularity drop off so sharply, that he could prove the earth is flat.

The vacancy will finally spare reporters from having to quote Blumenthal’s default statement on his political goals (“I want to be the best attorney general I can be”) when in recent years he failed to reach for higher office.