To follow up on Sam Boyd's post (and welcome back to Tapped, Sam!) on Dodd, what I find strange is not Dodd's fervency in pursuit of the nomination, but the strange absence of tactical thought in playing up his advantages. Dodd is a tremendously popular senator from a fundamentally blue state. He can do, during this election, what he wants. And frankly, he's done a good job of it. If I were to float down from Mars and land in a Democratic debate, my hunch is Dodd would be the guy best able to turn my head. But since neither Dodd nor I are opening the escape hatch of our space pods, we both know that he's far behind and needs a wedge with which he can force his way into the top tier. And for awhile, I assumed that wedge would be policy. Dodd had the right combination of liberal beliefs and establishment gravitas to undergird a supremely credible push for single-payer health care, vastly expanded labor rights, renewed activist government, etc. But, in fact, his policies, while good, have not been constructed so as to differentiate him from the field -- they place him right where the frontrunners are, by and large, leaving him with no actual points of disagreement he can use to topple the race's status quo. And he needs to topple the status quo. So my question isn't why Dodd appears to be running to win, but why he's not actually taking the risks that could help him win. Maybe his courageous hold on the FISA Bill is a sign that he's ready to start. --Ezra Klein