Ghost of Chris Dodd hovers over Senate race debates

The U.S. Senate race in Connecticut got crowded at the start because so many people saw an easy opportunity to take down a career politician who had overstayed his welcome with voters.

Chris Dodd, who eventually foresaw his own inevitable sacrifice at the altar of change, is out of the race now. But everyone is still running against the political establishment.

That was painfully clear in Monday night's debate for Democratic Senate candidates, when upstart Merrick Alpert, in his first bid for public office, deftly managed to wrap Richard Blumenthal's 20-year career as attorney general around his neck, and then pulled hard.

"How many jobs have your lawsuits created?" Alpert asked Blumenthal, in one of a series of sharp elbows to the attorney general's complacency.

Some of the Republicans, too, were out to spill politicians' blood in their debate Tuesday night.

If you want to change Washington, said economist and investor Peter Schiff, another political virgin, you have to send new people to Washington.

"Send me to Washington, and that town will never be the same," Schiff promised in his closing remarks.

Wrestling mogul Linda McMahon, so new to politics she's hardly even voted before, aimed directly at fellow candidate Rob Simmons, loyal soldier in the Bush Congress, to unleash her scorn of Washington politicians.

McMahon boasted of creating jobs and making payroll, something Simmons never did, she suggested, despite his work, for the state government, as a small business advocate.

McMahon went on to promise a term limit for herself, a rather generous two terms, I might add, or 12 long years.

Simmons, despite his handicap as the only Washington veteran in the group, generally held his own with the two aspiring politicians on stage with him, although, at the end, he seemed a tad desperate when he looked directly into the camera and pleaded with voters.

I need your support, he said, "so I can continue my life of public service."

Blumenthal, the night before, didn't fare quite so well, looking as if he could even become the Connecticut equivalent of Martha Coakley, the popular Massachusetts attorney general who dithered away a commanding lead in the polls to lose her Senate bid to a handsome , smooth-talking nobody.

Certainly, by the polls, this race is Blumenthal's to lose.

But his strangely thin debate performance, in which he didn't seem able to articulate the value to Connecticut voters of all those years of litigation, must have worried his supporters.

Maybe the attorney general, re-elected year after year in all those safe contests, has lost the politican's skills, the art of winning over voters.

Alpert, quick and energetic and charming, on the other hand, seems to have them, and he deployed them skillfully Monday night.

Instead of bragging of his accomplished career as a consumer advocate, Blumenthal found himself defending the high cost of health insurance and electricity in Connecticut, even admitting that electric rates are higher here than anywhere else in the continental U.S.

Simmons also looked the part of a policy wonk, especially while taking his reading glasses on and off to check notes and referring to his five-point plan for prosperity. He looked a bit like Ross Perot, except he was defending the Bush tax cuts and the entrenched health insurance industry, not promising to fix Washington.

McMahon, unlike Blumenthal, looked like she'd practiced a lot for the debate, to the point of being over-rehearsed. I almost expected her to check notes written on her palm.

On policy, the Democrats and Republicans hardly differed among themselves on the major issues.

At the extremes of the government-spending discussion, Alpert floated a wacky idea to spend a trillion dollars on new infrastructure, sort of stimulus on steroids. (No offense intended, Linda.) Schiff, on the other hand, pretty much wanted to stop spending money on everything, especially wars.

On this he seems closer in agreement with Alpert, who would reduce the troops in Afghanistan to only Special Operations forces.

"We're broke," said Schiff, urging an end to the country's practice of putting wars on credit cards.

Certainly, even after this week's debates, Blumenthal will remain the frontrunner. But if he's going to win he's going to have to do a better job of attacking the Washington establishment and convincing voters he's not just another career politician.

This race started out as a challenge to political complacency, and that's still where the sweet spot lies.

This is the opinion of David Collins.