Suzy Khimm is listed by The New Republic as a “reporter-researcher.” I haven’t yet waded through her three page article on Chris Dodd and his coming perilous reelection campaign to judge her overall ability as a reporter, but by the second paragraph it’s pretty easy to see that she’s not a researcher. Khimm writes:

Today, Dodd–five-term senator, established Washington powerbroker, the man whose “magnificent handshake,” The New York Times gushed two years ago, is “the grip of a pro, a … political pro, which he is”–has been reduced to shoring up his liberal bona fides by railing against credit card companies on a blog called My Left Nutmeg (motto: “Where Connecticut Dems Scratch That Progressive Itch”).

Senator Dodd’s first diary on My Left Nutmeg was on March 7, 2007, over two years ago. I know because at the time I was a front-page contributor and administrator of the site. I bumped his post from the diary section to the front page.

About two months later I joined Dodd’s presidential campaign’s internet department. Our campaign frequently posted updates from the campaign trail in diaries on MLN, so Nutmeggers could continue to see the hard work Dodd was doing both for our country and for Connecticut as a legislator, using his heightened profile as a presidential candidate to get more done for us all in the Senate. Additionally, during his frequent live chats with blog readers on the campaign trail, Dodd engaged with readers on My Left Nutmeg. Dodd wasn’t alone in the CT delegation in engaging this community from the campaign trail – Congressmen John Larson, Chris Murphy, and Joe Courtney all recorded strong endorsements of Dodd that we posted on MLN.

All of this is to say that Dodd has not been “reduced” to anything this cycle. He is doing what he’s always done – engage constituents in meaningful ways. He’s long viewed MLN as a key part of the Connecticut progressive-Democratic infrastructure and that he’s continuing to engage it not is not only not a shocking, bad thing, but a positive note that augurs well for his reelection prospects. It’s unfortunate that the TNR’s “reporter-researcher” didn’t bother to fact check one of her first sentences, as even the most cursory research would have proven her premise wrong.