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by Paul Bass | Dec 4, 2009 1:31 pm

(12) Comments | Commenting has been closed | E-mail the Author

Posted to: Politics, State

Washington, D.C.—One white-haired lion of the U.S. Senate glared at another white-haired lion of the Senate. Then he accused him of hypocrisy, of lying about his past actions.

The target? Connecticut U.S. Sen. Chris Dodd. He’s gotten used to being a target these days.

He waited for his turn to respond. He didn’t flinch or take it personally.

The lion pointing the finger was John McCain. Left behind by changing times, rejected by the public in his quest for president last year, visibly bitter over accusations about his own past after decades of unchallenged power and praise, McCain was holding court in his last refuge of relevance.

McCain was leading the Republican charge on the floor of the Senate Tuesday afternoon during debate on an $848 billion health care reform bill. In better days McCain might be trying to pass a bill, perhaps a bipartisan bill, with his name on it. Tuesday he had his name on an amendment aimed at delaying, and ultimately killing, someone else’s bill.

Across the aisle, Dodd was leading the Democratic charge on the Senate floor to pass the health reform bill, a bill he helped write.

Dodd was also working hard to avoid ending up like John McCain a year from now—and working his way back into the graces of the voters back home in the Nutmeg State.

And you thought passing health reform was hard.

The Heights & The Depths

“It’s amazing to me” how Republicans “rewrite history,” Dodd said of McCain’s attack when it came his turn to respond on the Senate floor Tuesday. “You can’t make this stuff up!”

Nor can you make up the predicament Chris Dodd found himself in this week.

He was at the center of power in Washington, exerting the kind of influence most elected officials can only dream of.

Meanwhile he continued to scramble to rescue his reputation—and his career—in Connecticut.

As other senators popped in for quick speeches then ducked out, Chris Dodd spent endless hours on the Senate floor. Like the celluloid Jimmy Stewart, Dodd played the role of the everyman’s crusader against fatcats and their purchased politicians. He even threatened to keep his colleagues in the chamber on Christmas.

Along with U.S. Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, Dodd served as the Democrats’ floor manager for the health reform bill, the most ambitious piece of legislation under consideration this year at the Capitol. Dodd made repeated speeches deflecting Republican criticism and pitching the bill as a smart way to insure 30 million more Americans and fix a broken system.

Dodd had other appointments to rush to, as well. He had one Thursday morning at the Senate Banking Committee, which he chairs. He oversaw a hearing on whether to confirm Ben Bernanke to a second term as Federal Reserve chief.

Along the way this week, Dodd showed up on TV and in newspaper photos almost as often Tiger Woods and the White House gate-crashers. It seemed like any story about important news in the nation’s capital quoted Chris Dodd as the decision-maker at the center of the action.

Dodd planned to rush home for another long weekend with a racing around Connecticut to high-profile events with a Powerful Obama Administration figure in tow. Education Secretary Arne Duncan agreed to travel to New Haven, Norwich, and Hartford to Dodd photo ops, until the health debate forced Dodd to cancel the events and stay in the Seante. Next week it’s Vice-President Joe Biden’s turn, in Hartford. In October Obama himself jetted to Stamford to pass the hat for his good friend in trouble.

Despite standing at the pinnacle of his power in D.C., Dodd finds himself at 65 running hard, and running scared, for reelection in Connecticut, more than a year before the expiration of his fifth six-year term.

That’s because he has made news daily not just for passing bills and posing with the president, but for mini-scandals and perilously low poll ratings. Two Republican challengers—former U.S. Rep. Rob Simmons and pro-wrestling magnate Linda McMahon, who’s never run for office before—are ahead of him, according to Quinnipiac University polls. They’ve been raising more money than he has, too (McMahon out of her personal fortune). Fewer than half of the state’s voters report having a positive view of the liberal senator.

The national GOP has targeted him for defeat. Dodd’s own party is nervous.

“Dem Whispers: Can Dodd Climb Out of His Hole?” blared a front-page headline Thursday in Washington’s Politico newspaper. The story mentioned how longtime allies in Connecticut—who still like Dodd for championing causes like health reform, consumer protection, family leave—want him to step aside anyway so state Attorney General Richard Blumenthal can run for, and preserve, a crucial Democratic seat.

Dodd has heard that plea for months. He is unmoved.

He took a break from managing the floor debate on the health care bill Tuesday to reflect on how he arrived at this “dark patch” and his intention to recover. (Click on the play arrow at the top of the story to watch a snippet.)

In an interview in the gilded, frescoe-walled “President’s Room” next to the Senate chambers, Dodd vowed to keep running, polls be damned.

In any case, it’s too late to pull an Oprah.

“I do want Democrats to hold the seat,” Dodd declared. “I think the best person to hold the seat is the person you’re talking to.”

A Bum Rap?

From the start of his Senate career, Dodd (pictured Tuesday) has avoided responding defensively when protesters heckle him, angry constituents dress him down, or reporters fire adversarial questions. The torrent of media attacks and political salvos this past year have tested him as never before. Example: A Nov. 29 Register editorial branded Dodd’s financial reform bill “hypocrisy that is hard to stomach” and a “campaign ploy meant to erase memory of his role in financial disaster.” On a given day you’re more likely to find Chris Dodd than Osama bin Laden bashed in lead Wall Street Journal editorials. (Dodd called the incessant criticism from the right-wing WSJ editorial-writers “a badge of honor. We fundamentally disagree on things.”)

Dodd winces sometimes and defends his record. But no matter how personally wronged he may feel, he hasn’t yet started sniping or snapping or seeking revenge against critics as fellow Connecticut Sen. Joe Lieberman did when he almost lost his seat in 2006 and has continued to do ever since. Lieberman demonized “bloggers” and had a sympathetic Beltway lobbyist travel to Connecticut incognito to heckle his opponent. Dodd said he doesn’t enjoy it when “people come to my events bellowing and screaming,” but “I would defend with my life the right to do that.”

That doesn’t make it fun.

Dodd was asked how it feels—two years after traveled to Iowa with his eyes on the presidency —to fight just to hold onto a once-invulnerable Senate seat and to be a lightning rod for anger over the hardest economic times since the Depression.

“Oh, just terrific. Especially during the holiday season. It has a warmth to it,” he responded. He laughed while he said it.

Turning serious, he acknowledged, “It’s been pretty hard. One article after another. One columnist after another. The fact that I’m doing as well as I am in the face of all this ... Maybe I have more strength than people thought. Imagine if you went through 16 months or 18 months of just being hammered?

“Anyone who has been through dark patches in their lives, in most cases the whole neighborhood or the community doesn’t know about it, so you manage to weather it on your own. In my case I’ll just have to go through it.”

To his critics, Dodd has himself to blame for those dark patches. He received an allegedly favorable insider “Friend of Angelo” loan from the head of Countrywide Financial, the now-nefarious subprime mortgage company Dodd was supposed to regulate as head of the Senate Banking Committee. He profited from a controversial investment in an Irish cottage in a deal involving an insider-trader whom he had helped obtain a presidential pardon. He helped fashion an open-ended bank bailout last fall in which lenders used billions to buy other banks instead of lending to small businesses. At the request of the Obama Administration, he personally intervened to enable executives of AIG to take bonuses out of bail-out money.

Going back 10 years, he played a key role in Congress’s repeal of the Depression-era Glass-Steagall Act. That gave birth to commercial-investment bank conglomerates like AIG and Citigroup. Their risky lending has been blamed for helping wreck the economy. Financial firms he regulated bankrolled much of his campaigns, including his short-lived presidential quest —which itself annoyed Connecticut voters.

Asked in Tuesday’s interview to explain his popularity collapse, Dodd acknowledged, “I wish I had handled some things differently.”

But mostly he defended his actions. He said he’s been misunderstood because of “accusations that turned out to be completely false.”

He noted that Democrats and Republicans alike in the Senate cleared him of wrongdoing in a investigation into the Countrywide mortgage. He has repeatedly portrayed himself as the fall guy for the AIG bonuses, since it was the Obama administration that made the rule change that allowed AIG to take bonuses out of bail-out money. (The parade of Obama-Dodd photo-ops and Connecticut appearances can be viewed in part as penance.)

Dodd also noted that the Senate passed the Glass-Steagall change 98-2. He characterized the vote as well-intentioned, if ultimately misguided.

“We were naive to believe” sufficient firewalls were in place to prevent conflicts of interest or rampant unsound lending practices at the new financial conglomerates, Dodd said. Then he placed more blame for the financial collapse for the federal government’s (read: Bush administration’s) failure to regulate the lenders and enforce underwriting standards.

Those votes and mini-scandals only partly explain Dodd’s remarkable popularity collapse. He also blames forces beyond his control: Majority-party incumbents are vulnerable in mid-year elections. And people have a reason to upset at the status quo. They’re hurting.

“Fourteen thousand people a day are losing health care,” Dodd observed. “Ten thousand people a day are losing their homes. Twenty thousand people a day are losing their jobs. People saw their 401ks wiped out entirely. It’s a dreadful time for millions of Americans. I think that’s a piece of it as well.”

The Power Pitch

To salvage his career, Dodd must convince Connecticut voters in coming months that they’ve misunderstood. Misunderstood the personal accusations against him. And misunderstood how things get done in Washington.

He said he’s counting on poll numbers to change once the election nears and he has a single Republican opponent. Then people can make a “one-on-one” comparison of who can better deliver as a senator.

After five terms, he has earned enough seniority to have his pick of one of the three most powerful posts in the Senate: chairman of the banking, foreign relations, or health, education and labor committee.

He’ll point to real legislation he has been shepherding through the Senate this year: To stop credit-card companies from gouging consumers. To create a new regulatory super-agency for the financial industry.

And, of course, to fix health care. When the ailing U.S. Sen. Ted Kennedy could no longer run the health committee hearings on the bill earlier this year, the gavel went to his buddy, Chris Dodd. Dodd was in the rare position of running two powerful committees at once as they considered two of the biggest bills of the year.

First-termers don’t get to do that, candidate Dodd will say.

In other words, Dodd is running as an incumbent against an outsider. That could prove hard to do in 2010. Especially for an incumbent painted as too cozy with Wall Street.

That takes explaining.

Dodd recalled another powerful incumbent who had explaining to do: former U.S. House Speaker Tom Foley. Foley represented Washington State. He served 30 years. Then he was challenged in 1994.

“A substantial number of [voters in Foley’s] Congressional district believed that if the person who defeated Tom Foley succeeded, they would become the speaker of the House.”

Foley lost that election.

What Irked McCain

The brittle McCain-Dodd exchange on the Senate floor Tuesday concerned McCain’s amendment to send the entire health reform bill back to committee in order to remove $500 billion in Medicare cuts.

McCain (at right in photo) and other Republicans have seized on those cuts in order to try to rally seniors to ditch the health bill. They’re claiming that “grandma” will lose out on health care benefits because of the cuts. Leading senior advocacy groups, including the AARP, didn’t buy what a Thursday USA Today editorial branded “deceptive,” “irresponsible” tactics that “set a new lower bar for demagoguery.”

On the Senate floor, Dodd and other Democrats defended those cuts. Those cuts are designed to weed out fraud and waste, they argued. In fact, benefits to seniors rise in the bill—which is why AARP supports it.

The Democrats also blasted Republicans for saying they support Medicare when they’ve opposed it so often in the past, since the program’s inception. They criticized the McCain amendment as a stalking horse for the insurance industry. Why not protect patients instead of insurers? they asked.

That’s what ticked off McCain.

Bristling, he stepped away from his lectern and seemed almost as if he would step across the aisle to confront Dodd and Illinois Sen. Richard Durbin face to face for “falsifying my position” and past record.

Pointing to his chest, he invoked his bipartisan glory days: “Sen. Kennedy and I fought for the patients’ bill of rights!”

Then he read aloud remarks Chris Dodd had made in 2005 when McCain proposed cutting $27 billion from Medicare and Medicaid as part of a deficit-reduction measure. Dodd accused him of not caring about poor kids and seniors and “working families.”

Now Dodd himself is championing $483 billion Medicare cuts, McCain proclaimed. Talk about a “flip-flop”!

Dodd made no apologies when he stood up to respond to McCain.

He didn’t criticize McCain personally. He did admit to attacking those cuts in 2005. No, he boasted, rather than admitted. History proved him right, Dodd said: Those cuts prevented people from receiving health care they need, like mammograms and cervical screenings.

Dodd turned to the Medicare cuts proposed in the health reform bill. Contrary to what McCain argued, he said, no services are cut. In fact, they’re increased. The cuts, over 10 years, would include lowering payments to hospitals—which hospitals have supported, because they can make the money back in the new newly insured patients they’ll allegedly treat under the plan. Other cuts come from switching seniors from the Medicare Advantage Plan, which costs taxpayers 14 percent more than regular Medicare. (McCain argued for preserving the plan, which he said enables seniors to get added care they need.)

It was approaching 3:30 p.m. Dodd had lost count of how many speeches he’d already given that day on the bill. Yet, as he segued into the Big Picture argument, he voice regained its passionate boom. You might call it the voice of a candidate on the stump, addressing invisible crowds of voters as much as five senators seated amid aisles of empty desks.

Allow this amendment to send health reform back to committee—and keep America waiting?

“Tell that to the family of four in my state paying $12,000 a year now [for insurance premiums] and $24,000 a year in seven years!”

We “risk bringing the economy to its knees if we don’t act,” he added.

And what if Connecticut voters don’t “act” by reelecting a man they used to send to Washington every six years with nary a question or complaint? Dodd needs to make an equally passionate case on that question, too, far from the embrace of Constitution Avenue.

Comments

posted by: Louis on December 4, 2009 2:38pm

No one apparently told Senator Dodd that his party has ended. Kinda feel sorry for the guy, but when the public is fatigued with you as a politicin, it is time to move on. You had a good run. It’s over.

posted by: blue dog dem on December 4, 2009 2:51pm

Since only taxes and service cuts are going to occur for the first five years, how is passing healthcare reform going to help that family paying $12,000 per year now? They’ll have to pay higher taxes and probably higher premiums until the wonderful cure-all gov’t option begins.

We’re going to “bring the economy to its knees” if we don’t pass healthcare reform, but those that are not insured now still won’t be for another five years. How is that helping them and the economy now and the next few years?

posted by: Wolcott Bill on December 4, 2009 3:59pm

I was a long time Dodd voter. I feel he insulted the intelligence of the voters and constituency with his conduct relative to Countrywide. Do not tell me Mr. Dodd that you recieved no favorable treatment while glaring evidence proves otherwise. My vote is lost and I can only hope other voters feel the same and vote you out of office [...]

posted by: iamjh on December 4, 2009 4:07pm

The twists and turns of political fortune, including Senator Dodd’s missteps, are well-articulated here. But when you boil it down, Senator Dodd has been a tireless representative for Connecticut, an advocate for working people and a great leader on the national scene. It would be short-sighted to replace him with either another Democrat or a Republican challenger. Dodd has worked hard and done a tremendous amount of good. People should focus on trying to get a good governor elected, not dumping on Chris Dodd.

posted by: T-Man on December 4, 2009 6:13pm

The man wanted to move to Iowa, it’s all about HIM. Bye, Bye - DUMP DODD

posted by: AndersonScooper on December 4, 2009 6:27pm

Across the country Republicans are praying Dodd stubbornly stays in this race. Because if Dodd retires, it’s all over for their chances. Dick Blumenthal would win in a rout.

Let’s hope we soon see polls of Blumenthal, Bysiewicz and Ned Lamont matched up against Republican contenders Simmons and McMahon. My belief is that Blumenthal would be up something like 60%-40%, with Bysie and Ned up by 15% or so. But maybe I’m wrong and the Republican “resurgence” isn’t mainly about Dodd.

Of course it could be that the Connecticut Dems decides that after 30 years of service, win or lose Dodd deserves a chance at a sixth term. But folks need to realize that if Dodd is the nominee, we could lose more than just a U.S. Senate seat. Money, media, energy, turnout and other dynamics could easily cost us both Jim Himes’-D (CT-04), and Chris Murphy’s-D (CT-05) Congressional seats. Plus who knows what damage would be done to our Statehouse majorities?

Moreover, Dodd 2010 will severely damage our chances of winning the Governorship for the first time in twenty plus years.

So personally I hope Dodd retires in the next month or so. If not Connecticut Democrats need to have deep discussions about what is the best way forward.

In his fifth term as Attorney General, Blumenthal is the most popular politician in the state with an amazing 78% favorability, (Dodd’s stuck at a miserable 40%.) Should we be Drafting Dick? At what point do you bench Joe Montana (Dodd) in favor of Steve Young (Blumenthal)?

posted by: Walt on December 5, 2009 7:30am

Dems, formerly the champion for seniors are now the enemy of the old.

They are out to kill the Medicare Advantage Plans, and seriously harm , if not destroy, Medicare itself.

Taking almost a half trillion $$ from already financially- weak Medicare to use for other purposes and claiming they are strengthening the program is ridiculous.

Dodd is among the worst.

Just hope the wrestling lady is not his opponent this year,although I’d probably vote for her just to oppose Dodd.

posted by: Edward_H on December 5, 2009 10:33am

Paul Bass

One white-haired lion of the U.S. Senate glared at another white-haired lion of the Senate.

I think fat-cat instead of lion would be a more accurate description of the two Senators.

posted by: Joe on December 5, 2009 7:52pm

These articles from the Center for Responsive Politics on Dodd this week are awfully interesting.

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/12/down-but-not-quite-out-an-exam.html

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2009/12/what-exactly-did-senate-bankin.html

posted by: TheVin on December 6, 2009 3:07am

Anderson,,,trading a Dodd for a Dick is a zero sum game. My gosh its astounding how folks still can’t get their minds around the bigger picture.

posted by: strangerthanfiction on December 7, 2009 1:11am

Chris Dodd is a good man and has been a tireless, committed advocate for middle class working folk. Like his good friend, Ted Kennedy, Dodd sponsored or had a hand in a tremendous amount of legislation that has greatly improved the quality of all of our lives. He is one of the real warriors who has never backed down from a fight with the fatcats and the big corporate interests that put profit over people. I think a certain naivete did get him into trouble - he never imagined that the Bush Administration would completely abandon its regulatory function over the financial markets nor the runaway greed that would bring the country to its knees. At this tough moment, after 30 years, it’s time for him to reconnect with the voters of CT and remind them of all the great work he has done for them and what he can do for them still.

posted by: Joe on December 7, 2009 5:17pm

Great article, Paul. One correction:

He didn’t _travel_ to Iowa to run for president: he _moved_ to Iowa. Dodd rented a house in Des Moines and put his little girl in kindergarten out there. No presidential candidate has ever tried that stunt, while holding office in another state.

And then he finished dead last in the Iowa caucuses—the only candidate to finish behind Uncommitted. He spent $20 million—opened a dozen headquarters around the state—had eighty people on staff in Iowa—and received .02% of the vote.

Moving to Iowa may not be a big deal in the great scheme of things, but it will prove one arrogant act too many for Connecticut voters to tolerate.

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