Are the rats jumping ship or being thrown overboard?

The announcements this week, all on the same day, that Democrat Senators Chris Dodd and Byron Dorgan and Colorado Governor Bill Ritter, also a Democrat, will not seek reelection looks like a case of rats jumping a sinking ship. But it could also be a case of the rats being thrown overboard by the Democrat leadership as polls are indicating that their chances of being reelected in their respective states are somewhat less than an ice cube has in hell.

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The Democrats, who are no strangers to polls, are probably thinking that most of their senators standing for reelection this year have an uphill battle and in attempting to exercise some degree of damage control could be taking their sure losers out of the race. Dodd was particularly vulnerable given his coziness with AIG and his shady dealings with Countrywide Mortgage as a friend of that company’s president, Angelo Mozilo, while Dodd served as head of the Senate Banking Committee. In addition some of Dodd’s sexual shenanigans while partying with the late Senator Edward Kennedy of Chappaquidik fame have left him open to charges of corruption and abuse of power. Dorgan is a different story. Having obviously sampled some of Obama’s Kool-Aid and coming out in whole-hearted support of healthcare reform, the people of North Dakota are licking their chops in anticipation of spanking him; or at least that’s what the polls indicate, as Dorgan is currently trailing his possible Republican challenger, Governor John Hoeven by an astounding 22%. As for Gov. Ritter, chances are he saw the handwriting on the wall and decided that rather than lose a tough election fight he could fare better as a lame duck governor than an dead duck candidate seeking to retain his position. By removing high profile, valuable targets from the election, the Dems can run a couple of new candidates and claim they had nothing to do with helping to enact the healthcare fiasco. But like a lot of Democrat thinking, this surely has an element of whiffledust, as the electorate is probably not as clueless as Democrats believe. If the Dems are tossing the rats, what possible inducement could there be for them to be slipped quietly overboard, rather than kicking and screaming? Some hints of this have come with the rumors that “retiring” Senator Dodd could well be moving from the Senate’s Russell building to the Treasury building to replace the hapless and unpopular tax cheat, Timothy Geithner. Some observers believe that Byron Dorgan was asked by the Dem leadership to sit out the next election, given the extreme reaction that the majority of North Dakotans have had against Obamacare. Possible inducements to get him to step down could include future consideration for an administration job, possibly in the commerce or labor departments, given Dorgan’s involvement in consumer rights and union issues. Or it could just as well have been the bleak prospect of facing voters whose rage would surely be vented against a Democrat incumbent. Regardless of whether these rats are jumping or being pushed by the Obamites, these defections from the 2010 elections are indicative of tough times ahead for Dems. But not tough enough in my opinion. The one rat who’s still on board is Harry “I hate when people try to sneak secret special deals into important Senate bills without debate” Reid, who apparently has found out he likes secret deals after all. Reid, despite his weak and lackadaisical appearance, has demonstrated a ferocity and cunning worthy of the slimiest rat in the most corrupt sewer. He should be the target of a national campaign to unseat him this November with the establishment of a national “Dump Harry” fund to offset the bottomless well of money the Obamites will surely be pumping into Reid’s reelection coffers. Getting Dodd and Dorgan out of the Senate is a start, but defeating the Senate’s chief rat would be a great start.