What a day to spend a morning in a radio studio, unable to get a wireless signal. With each passing hour, I wondered, “Gee, how many more Democrats have announced they’re not running for reelection in 2010?”

The news in Connecticut is genuinely good news for Democrats – Attorney General Blumenthal is leading the three GOP possibilities – but I suspect this race will grow more competitive once the nominees are clear.

Sure, a lot of the anti-Dodd animosity was based on the senator’s personal failings and scandals — his sweetheart mortgage from subprime lender Countrywide under the “Friends of Angelo” program, his work to add the provision in the stimulus that allowed firms receiving bailout funds to keep giving out employee bonuses, his lie to CNN reporter Dana Bash about adding the provision, his sudden revision to Senate financial-disclosure forms about the value of his cottage in Ireland, his moving his family to Iowa in 2007 — but the same dissatisfaction that has brought down the approval ratings of incumbent senators and governors all over the country was undoubtedly at work in Dodd’s numbers, too.

Unemployment in Connecticut dipped a bit last month, to 8.2 percent, but the state still lost jobs. The state’s economy is probably going to face a rough 2010, with the drop in personal income doubling. It’s always been a state with a high cost of living, and while Blumenthal’s position as state attorney general doesn’t put him in charge of the whole state government, he’s an incumbent and part of the system as it stands. Blumenthal will be hard-pressed to paint Rob Simmons, Linda McMahon, or Peter Schiff as part of the status quo.

The message of “Had enough?” is still likely to resonate, even if it doesn’t resonate quite as much as it did when Dodd was the face of the status quo.