Chris Dodd's broadside at the financial services industry has been a reversal of much of his political history.

Coming from Connecticut—a state that is home to many of Wall Street's elite and the de facto capital of the U.S. insurance industry—the Democrat’s political career has been intertwined with the financial industry. Despite his liberal voting record, the investment and securities industry was the lead financial supporter of Dodd's fruitless bid for the 2008 Democratic presidential nomination.

Of the $47 million Dodd has raised since 1989, according to opensecrets.org, $6 million came from securities and investment firms. That makes the industry by far his largest financial supporter, more than double law firms, which come in second.

Perhaps even more symbolic was the Wall Street bailout. Four of Dodd's top five contributors, according to opensecrets.org, were firms that wound up on the dole—Citigroup, Bear Stearns, AIG and Goldman Sachs.

Dodd's campaign manager Jay Howser said Dodd's list of contributors had nothing to do with his long record of pro-consumer legislation.

"Contributing is one thing," Howser said. "The work you do is another."

Dodd was among those who took on the task of getting fellow lawmakers to swallow a very bitter pill to pass the bailout. When he took to the floor on October 1, 2008, he acknowledged the bailout could cost some senators their jobs. "Who could come to this floor and say with a clean conscience: 'I will save my job but put hundreds of thousands of jobs at risk all across this great country of ours'," Dodd said.

Most people were looking at the election then just a few weeks away. Dodd wasn't running. But now Dodd's words have proven prophetic for his own career. With polls showing he would lose to either of the Republicans vying to challenge him, a few local party officials are talking openly about whether he should be replaced on the ballot by Attorney General Dick Blumenthal. Far more are talking about it privately.

Still, it's not the bailout that most pundits talk about when they list Dodd's political troubles.

Those began in earnest in July 2008, when Portfolio.com reported that Dodd and Democratic Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota refinanced properties through Countrywide’s “V.I.P.” program in 2003 and 2004. In August of this year, the Senate Ethics Committee found there was no evidence that Dodd sought or knowingly received any preferential treatment.

Then a provision Dodd inserted in the February stimulus bill, originally cast as Dodd defying the administration's kid-glove approach to bonuses, turned out to lock in bonuses for some of the most hated people in the financial world–AIG executives.

But pundits say Dodd's political problems go deeper than that. First, there's that improbable run for president in the 2008 cycle. Dodd moved his family to the crucial caucus state of Iowa to boost his limited chances.

And while he was stumping through the frozen Iowa farmland, back in Washington the first signs of trouble were emerging in the banking and housing industries, his purview as banking chairman.

But Jennifer Duffy, an analyst with The Cook Political Report, says much of Dodd's political trouble at home is a general sense that after 30 years in the Senate, he and his constituents don't know each other any more.

"Call the bigger reason 'outta touch'," Duffy said. That means he'll need to do more than beat up on Wall Street and big banks to regain the trust of his constituents.

Still, Quinnipiac University political science professor Scott McLean said Dodd can win when voters in the traditionally Democratic state stop focusing just on him and look at the Republican candidates.

"They don't have to love Chris Dodd," McLean said. "They just have to love the Republican less."