DORGAN AND DODD QUIT SINKING SHIP at DickMorris.com

DORGAN AND DODD QUIT SINKING SHIP at DickMorris.com: "The retirements of Chris Dodd of Connecticut and Byron Dorgan of North Dakota are the latest evidence that the Democrats understand what they have done to their party by following Obama’s radical agenda. That they both lack the courage to face the music for their own roles in this debacle says more about their character than their ideology.

But the broader problem the party faces is that it no longer has a right or a center, only a left wing.

The very public way in which the existence of a center-right in the Democratic Party proved to be a mirage has done more to undermine the party’s chances for victory in 2010 than any other aspect of the healthcare debate.

When liberal Republicans failed to rally to Bill Clinton’s 1993-1994 agenda — including his failed healthcare proposal — they laid the basis for their total demise in subsequent years. Sens. Jeffords, Chaffee, D’Amato, Packwood, Hatfield and Specter (as a Republican) are gone. Sens. Snowe and Collins are all that remain of the once-dominant Rockefeller wing of the GOP. They have been replaced by real Democrats.

Now that Ben Nelson, Blanche Lincoln, Mary Landrieu and Byron Dorgan in the Senate and the likes of Marion Berry, Tom Perriello and John Spratt in the House have shown how easily they fold under pressure and how thin their conservatism really is, their states and districts will no longer be deceived into reelecting them. They will be replaced by real Republicans."