Is Chris Dodd Unelectable?

Some seem to think so. From the Courant:

"[I]t is increasingly clear to both independent analysts and Democratic leaders that Dodd is just too badly damaged to have a decent shot at getting re-elected, almost regardless of who wins the Republican nomination. Democrats have given Dodd time to attempt to repair his problems, but nothing appears to have helped enough to salvage his position,'' Duffy writes.

The publication has moved the Connecticut Senate race from "toss up" to "leans Republican.''

UPDATE: Colleen Flanagan, spokeswoman for state Democrats, dismissed the Cook Report ratings change as inside-the-beltway political handicapping.

"It's no secret what the Washington smart guys think about this race,'' she said in an email after the Courant asked for a comment. "But it just doesn't matter what they think. They don't vote in Connecticut and they don't really understand Chris Dodd's decades of service and the relationship he's built with folks here by delivering for them time and again."

Yet, the depth of Dodd' troubles are clear to many in Connecticut, where once heretical whispers that the state's senior senator step aside in favor of the immense popular Attorney General Richard Blumenthal or perhaps U.S. Rep. Chris Murphy, have grown louder.

Following Dodd's lousy showing in a Quinnipiac University poll last month, the Courant spoke with more than a dozen Democratic party activists and left-leaning bloggers. While few were willing go on the record, they all spoke of their fears that Dodd wouldn't be able turn things around by election day, 2010 and many privately expressed their hopes that he would step aside for the overall benefit of the party.