Sen. Christopher Dodd's image as a Northeast liberal could pose a hurdle in his longshot bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination. The Connecticut senator will be running in the turbulent wake of another prominent New England liberal, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass. Kerry's losing 2004 campaign embittered some Democrats who contend he squandered a prime chance for his party to capture the White House. Those bad feelings have lingered as the 2008 contest begins to unfold. "The party just nominated a New England liberal whose campaign was a failure," said Dante Scala, an associate professor of politics at Saint Anselm College in New Hampshire who wrote "Stormy Weather," a book about the state's primary. "That's going to be one strike against" Dodd.
Dodd brushed aside any suggestion that his Northeast liberal roots could hurt his candidacy. "It's a false assumption," Dodd said in a telephone interview Thursday with The Associated Press. "People don't think in those terms... Most Americans don't care about these labels we put on."
Most voters are more concerned about bread-and-butter issues such as health care and jobs, not political labels, said Dodd, a five-term senator. "The overwhelming number of people want to know what you can do to put the country back on track," Dodd said. "They don't care about labels."
That's what Dukakis kept saying. And he didn't even resemble a frog.