Draft Dodd for Majority Leader?

From December 17th, 2007

In wake of his fabulous performance of the Senate floor today I floated the idea of a Draft Dodd campaign in the comments. And now I want to float the idea in a diary. In a great diary Hesiod put out the idea of Dodd as Majority Leader and it got a strong response. So lets doing something about it.

Would you support a campaign to pressure Senator Dodd to challenge Harry Reid as Majority Leader and pressure Democratic Senators to vote for him in a leadership election?

Harry Reid has betrayed the Democratic Party's ideals by caving in on too many things. He has failed to show the leadership required by a Senate Majority Leader. We have to do more then complain. It's time for action.

He Could Win:
Chris Dodd ran for Majority Leader in wake of the Democrats defeat in 1994. Here's what he had to say then.

"I can fight and win and lose with the best of them"

Harry Reid is not a fighter. Chris Dodd would be. Chris Dodd lost by one vote when he ran against Tom Daschle. That vote was soon to be Republican Ben Nighthorse Campbell. Since then he has been DNC Chair and ran for president among other things.

We Need Him:
I don't support Chris Dodd's bid for the presidency but he would make a great Majority Leader. He would fight for our interests and get stuff done. And he would be a whole lot better public face then Reid. Dodd has been a leader and although I disagree with him on many things no one is perfect and Dodd has shown real leadership in the Senate on FISA and many other things.

Action:
We can't just hope for him though. Chris Dodd has spent a life in public service and if the call is strong enough I believe he will answer it and take the plunge. But we will need a tremendous pressure campaign on him and the Democratic senators who's votes he will need. The leadership campaign is a backroom, closed campaign so we won't know if people voted right but if we put enough pressure on them we could make a difference. But the biggest thing is would you people be up for this? I'm willing to set up some groups and launch this but I won't if it's not going to go anywhere. Would you make calls, e-mails ad blogs about a Draft Dodd campaign? Would you do all you could to put pressure on Dodd and any Democratic Senators of yours?

So it's up to us. Do we want to let spineless leaders represent our party. Is there better choice or maybe, Draft Dodd?