When Dodd rolled out his regulatory reform bill last month, he'd given up on negotiations with Senator Richard Shelby of Alabama, the top Republican on his committee. And he left out many of the compromises hammered out by liberal icon Barney Frank, chairman of the House Financial Services Committee. Frank succeeded last Friday in getting the House to pass his reform proposal by a 223-202 vote.

Dodd’s Consumer Financial Protection Agency lacked the exemptions that had been carved into the House version during negotiations. One Republican complained it was "on steroids."

Bankers were bug-eyed over his proposal to take banking regulation away from the Federal Reserve and FDIC and put it in the hands of a single, "one size fits all" bank regulator.

"The idea of a single regulator has beguiled policymakers for years," said Steve Verdier, head of congressional affairs for the Independent Community Bankers Association. "When you look behind it, it doesn't solve the problems that we have, and it creates ones we don't have. "

But the Fed has become a symbol of everything that makes people mad about the financial crisis and the bailouts, making it a rich target of populist anger on the left and the right.

Even Frank swiped at Dodd's single banking regulator, saying, among other things, that the FDIC was a success story in regulation and shouldn't be wiped out.

"That's a serious problem because of the dual banking system," Frank said shortly after Dodd's plan was rolled out. Since the FDIC has to use its budget to rescue the banks it regulates, "they act like it's their money."

Dodd's get-tough approach on regulatory reform didn't last long in the Senate, where compromise is king. It wasn't too surprising that Republicans took aim at his bill. But when it came before his committee, even Democrats started taking shots at his single banking regulator and CFPA plan. At that point, he backed off threats to jam the bill through committee and promised a more bipartisan approach.

He paired up Republican and Democratic senators from the committee to take on subject areas, like the CFPA, derivatives, and corporate governance.

Republican Senator Bob Corker of Tennessee said that Dodd told him that he was looking for bipartisan legislation, not a campaign issue.

"If he was focused on making partisan hay, he could have forced it through the committee on a party-line vote," said Corker, who was paired with Virginia Democrat Mark Warner to hash out "too big to fail" language. "I haven't seen any indication his race back in Connecticut is affecting the way he's handling this bill."