Afternoon Diary: Dodd gets major endorsement

Quiet days in presidential politics. The main news has been the unexpected report that the International Association of Fire Fighters is endorsing Chris Dodd. The IAFF was the first union to endorse Kerry in 2004, and it has significant political muscle in NH, Dodd's main hope for a breakthrough. Clinton was hoping to get the IAFF endorsement, so this is a minor blow to her campaign - minor because it could have been worse if the IAFF had endorsed Obama or Edwards. But this endorsement could make some people take a second look at the CT senator. Dodd does have, after all, a lenghty record on traditional Democratic issues. Much longer than the record of, say, Edwards, Obama or Clinton! Dodd's frustration at this not being recognized was evident at the Democratic labor debate in Chicago last month when Biden and him teamed up against Edwards to point out that Edwards might be talking a lot about poverty and labor, but that he had done very little actual work on these issues compared to either of them. It will be interesting to see whether the IAFF's endorsement helps Dodd push this argument further.

In other news:

• Romney is back up on TV in IA and NH, after a short advertisement break in mid-August. Romney has been the only major GOP candidate that has run ads in early states. This has worked wonders for him as he leads the rest of the field there very comfortably. But it also means he has been spending much more of his money early on. Unfortunately for him, he has little choice. He has very weak name recognition compared to McCain and Guliani and has to introduce himself to voters. The big question is how long can the other major GOP candidates afford to let Romney be the only one running ads? At what point does it start being too late to cut into Romney's lead?

• In what is unmistakable proof of his collapse, McCain is now registering only 23% in a poll of the Republican primary in his home state of Arizona. The same Arizona State University poll had McCain at 32% in April and 44% in February. Once again - this is McCain's home state we're talking about.

• I reported yesterday that the pace of Senate races was rapidly increasing, mostly to the advantage of Democrats who are expanding the playing field left and right. MSNBC takes it a step further by talking of a 60 seat fillibuster-proof Democratic Senate majority. While I am confident the Democrats will have a good year in 2008, 60 seats would mean a 9 seat-picking... which still seems more than extremely unlikely. Yet, there are many seats the GOP has to defend, the DSCC is crushing the NRSC in fundraising, and these stories about depressed Republicans and gleeful Democratic prospects are going to further hurt GOP morale, fundraising and recruitement.

• AL-Sen: Sen. Sessions looked pretty safe even before Democrats failed in their efforts to recruit their best hope Al Sparks. And the first poll of the campaign confirms that Sessions doesn't have much to worry about. He leads 59% to 37% against State Sen. Viviane Figures in a SUSA poll.

• The entertaining original police report of the Craig bathroom incident, as published by Slate. [It is worth pointing out that the details of this scandal are making a lot of people very uncomfortable, more to come later.]