Dodd Hopes for a ‘Game Over’ Soon

Sen. Chris Dodd of Connecticut said today that “some adults have to take over at some point here and say ‘Game over’” in the race between Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton.

Dodd endorsed Obama in February after his own presidential bid failed to catch fire. He said in an interview with Trail Mix that the protracted fight for the Democratic nomination, if it is not settled soon, “could be devastating” and could cause the Democrats to lose the general election.

“This is not some sort of athletic contest,” Dodd said. If the nomination battle ends in a divided convention, he said, the bad feelings could cause many Democrats to stay home in November. That would also negatively affect Democrats in down-ballot races, like races for governor and Senate, he added.

Dodd stopped short of calling for Clinton to withdraw from the race, and he wouldn’t get specific on how exactly he believes that “some adults” — presumably meaning party elders, like DNC chairman Howard Dean — could bring about an end to the race before the summer. Here’s the full quote from Dodd:

“I think if you allow this to go on a whole lot longer, it’s a real mistake in my view. And I fully respect, having been a candidate myself, I know the desire to want to stay in, in particular if you’re doing what you perceive to be fairly well and making a case for yourself. But these decisions shouldn’t be left exclusively, at some point, to what the candidates want to do or their supporters want to do. Some adults have to take over at some point here and say ‘Game over, and this is where we are, and this is the result and we’re going forward.’ And start to patch it up in the spring, late spring, rather than to wait until the summer to try to do it.”

Dodd also expressed concern that the 2008 Democratic national convention would become a repeat of the convention in 1980, when Dodd was first elected to the U.S. Senate. That year, Democrats were divided between Jimmy Carter and Edward Kennedy. They settled on Carter, but Dodd said that the lingering bad feelings from the split were one factor in the election of Ronald Reagan that year, and also helped Republicans unseat a number of Democratic incumbents in Congress.

Trail Mix isn’t sure how Dodd or Dean or anyone else could force Clinton and Obama to make nice before they’re good and ready. One idea: Dodd could call in some laser cats.