Lame Duck Chris Dodd Goes It Alone

Ready for some rich political humor?

Lame ducky Democratic Senator Chris Dodd is attracting all sorts of media attention as he attempts to push a massive, comprehensive financial sector regulatory bill through the chamber.

In an election year, when he isn't even running, having been effectively driven from office by scandals involving his lax oversight of the very sector he presumes to know how to re-regulate, does anyone really believe the pig in question will pass?

It's been criticized for being too sweeping, too naive in assuming that scrambling regulatory chairs will make a difference, and including simply wrong-headed remedies which will, in time, constrict consumer access to credit.

Yesterday, Republican Senator Bob Corker called a press conference to lament that health care issues had supplanted financial regulatory reform in importance. That the bill died a few yards' of consensus.

Dodd then trotted out and declared the bill not to be dead. On the other hand, sources generally reported that the garbage Dodd will present on Monday is not a bi-partisan product.

So let me get this straight. The Democrats now have only 59 votes in a Senate that requires 60 to pass legislation. Dodd is retiring and has no more pull. He's been disgraced by his own inept performance on the Committee he now chairs.

He has no Republican allies co-sponsoring the bill.

It's a tumultuous election year that could quite possibly see both Houses changing party majorities.

And Chris Dodd thinks he has a bill, all on his own, that can pass?

Now, that's funny.