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Sen. Blumenthal?

Anton Chekov, the great Russian playwright, use to say that if you introduce a gun in the first act, it had better go off by the final act. Dick Blumenthal, in Connecticut politics, is the gun that won’t go off.

Blumenthal has his name in the media every other day, sometimes multiple times. All that juice, reporters figure, ought to be put to some useful purpose, and Blumenthal has numerous times expressed his interest in occupying some post other than being attorney general.

It has been widely reported in various media outlets that both US Connecticut senators have slipped on blood. Lieberman is in the progressive dog house largely because of his position on the war in Iraq. Dodd lately has run into trouble over a sweetheart deal he had made with Countrywide a defunct mortgage lender, an industry Dodd regulates as chairman of the banking committee.

All this is a recipe for imaginative speculation.

The Hill, a beltway publication, has cited anonymous “multiple Connecticut Democrats” to the effect that Blumenthal “has begun informing influential members of the state's political class that he will prepare for a run against Lieberman.”

There are multiple Connecticut Democrats who will not be satisfied until Lieberman is hanging from the yard arm of the Democratic ship they’ve pirated, and to the anti-Lieberman mob any noose will do; why not Blumenthal?

Blumenthal, as usual, has been as brash as Caligula about the whole business. “My only focus and my sole interest right now is on the race in 2010 and seeking reelection as attorney general,” he told the Hill. Even so, Blumenthal said, it “would be an honor, and it's always been a career goal. I've said that I look forward to continuing opportunities for public service in the future.”

There’s the hat tree, and anyone is free to hang their hat on it.

The journalistic pump here in Connecticut is used to being primed with such tantalizing hints and feints from Blumenthal.

This one will be worth a few column inches in the morning press and on anti-Lieberman blog sites.

There will be a picture.

Comments

UBUIBIOK said…
Nice piece.
_
UBUIBIOK

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