Could Larry Kudlow Beat Chris Dodd?



(image via JH/NYSocialDiary)

Chris Dodd has been in the Senate far too long. He's accumulated too much power. The Senator from the state of Connecticut has been drinking his own Kool-Aid for so long he is altogether out-of-touch with the hard economic realities of regular Americans. He has lost whatever edge he ever had, fallen prey to the instincts of the Establishment to which he now wholly belongs. Thisd Hedge Fund Senator is not the first to have been corrupted by the raw power of the Senate Banking Committee. But he is a rare Democrat who seems more concerned about bankers and financiers and hedgies than he does the working class. Chris Dodd, to be sure, is no Ted Kennedy. Although he might have been ...

Enter: Lawrence Kudlow. Kudlow has expressed an interest in that Senate seat. He's hungry and at fighting weight. And though Kudlow has many minuses (past cocaine and alcohol addiction; pushuing the right wing narrative that poor African-Americans for the housing crisis in the thick of campaign 2008; an oily, pro-laissez faire attitude in a post laissez-faire age), he is a fresh face and he seems to have tapped into rising populist anger on his CNBC program. In fine, it is not inconceivable that Larry Kudlow could beat Chris Dodd in 2010.

Dodd admitted that he essentially lied when he said he didn't create the wording in the bail-out that allowed the AIG bonuses. The GOP, searching for a weakness in the Rahm-Schumer-Obama blowout, are already running commercials featuring Dodd as the Democrat posterboy for bad liberal behavior. That, IMHO, is a fatal political wound. Allow it to fester and it could infect the entire party with a malady that even Dr. House couldn't cure. Dodd ought to resign, announce he will not run again in 2010, or risk becoming a millstone around his party's neck in the next round of Congressional races.

Connecticut State Senator Rob Simmons, we cannot fail to note, is already in the race with skin in the game while Kudlow vacillates. Simmons is, at present, in a statistical dead heat with Dodd, and Kudlow -- were he to run -- would have to get past him.

Another minus for Kudlow is that Connecticut -- and the entire Northeast -- leans leftwards post-Bush/Cheney/Rove. The New England Republican is an endangered species. Even Republicans like Olympia Snowe and Susan Collins(rare Republican Northeasterners in the US Senate) have shown Democrat sympathies in their recent voting records (Darwinian survival instinct inveighing against political extinction?). Larry Kudlow is a rock-ribbed pro-free market zero capital gains taxes Republican. But has that era passed in the Northeast, in New England? The most "conservative" Senator Connecticut has elected in recent memory are Centrists like Lowell Weicker and Joe Lieberman, and no one would mistake them for Larry Kudlow. Then again, he is running in Connecticut, one of -- if not the -- richest states of the union. Connecticut a high percentage of bankers and hedge fundies and trust funders. That could make the difference.