Connecticut Commentary: Red Notes from a Blue State

Here is a transcript of US Sen. Chris Dodd’s interview with the National Journal: Q: As I mentioned earlier, you were the General Chairman of the Democratic National Committee. Now, you know that a lot of Democrats feel that this increasingly bitter race between Obama and Clinton is hurting the party. First of all, do you think that is true, and secondly, if you were in charge, what would you do? Dodd: Well, I think it is hurting. Look, we’ve got five more months to go before the Democratic Convention at the end of August and, candidly, we cannot go five more months with the kind of daily sniping that’s going on and have a candidate emerge in that convention. My hope is that it will be Barack Obama, but if it’s Hillary Clinton, she too will suffer, in my view, from this kind of a campaign that I think is undermining the credibility and the quality of the two candidates that we have. We have two very strong candidates. So I’m worried about this going on endlessly and to a large extent, ...

The possibility of a brokered Democrat convention does not please Howard Dean, the Chairman of the Democrat Party. “The idea that we can afford to have a big fight at the convention and then win the race in the next eight weeks, I think, is not a good scenario," Dean said in an interview with NY1 television.” “I think we will have a nominee sometime in the middle of March or April. But if we don't, then we're going to have to get the candidates together and make some kind of an arrangement,” said Dean , “because I don't think we can afford to have a brokered convention -- that would not be good news for either party." In a brokered convention, the presidential nominee would be decided on the floor of the national convention, an event that had not occurred in decades. In pre-primary days, such decisions lay in the hand of party power brokers adept at manipulating delegates. But the old boys in the smoke filled rooms have been long gone, and it is not at all certai...