Dodd: Obama will be elected to a second term 'overwhelmingly'

President Obama will be "re-elected overwhelmingly," Sen. Chris Dodd (D-Conn.) confidently predicted today.

Appeaing on Imus in the Morning, Dodd rejected a comparison between Obama and Jimmy Carter and said Obama will be more politically successful.

"No, no, no. You're wrong on that," Dodd told Imus of the Carter comparison. "That's a mark we'll put it down. This man will be reelected and reelected overwhelmingly."

Meanwhile, speaking of his own decision not to run for re-election, Dodd said he would not run even if he was 100% sure he would win.

Dodd recounted making the decision as he visited Ted Kennedy's grave in Arlington National Cemetery:

 There wasn't a cloud in the sky. There was a new snow up there. There wasn't a person around and went to his grave. I looked back over that city and began to ask myself the basic question, why are you running again and do you want to serve for seven more years? And if you'd given me the seat, eliminated all the opposition, said look, it's you can be the senator, no questions asked for the next seven years, the answer is no.

Thirty years is plenty of time. I've enjoyed it immensely. Someone once asked John McCormick, the great Irish tenor, why he was quitting. He quit right at the height of his singing career. And his answer was, I'd rather ask them why am I quitting than why haven't I quit. Anyway, so, I don't want to hang around and reach a point where you're just there marking time and going robotically through the process to be there. Thirty-six years in the Congress is a long time. I've enjoyed it. I love the people I served with, and it's time to move on and do something else.