Something interesting has happened since Byron Dorgan announced his retirement from the Senate Tuesday night. We now see a movement developing to get Ed Schultz to hang up the microphone and hit the campaign trail. Today Bob Fertik over at democrats.com started an online petition to draft Ed.

I have been critical of some of Schultz’s positions in the past, particularly the very negative views he took of Hillary Clinton during the primary, but to me Schultz would be a great replacement for Dorgan. Politically they are much aligned and Ed has the demeanor needed to keep North Dakota in the blue column.

Given all that, the man who is retiring doesn’t think Ed will run:

Outgoing North Dakota Democratic Senator Byron Dorgan predicted on Thursday that MSNBC host Ed Schultz would not run for the seat he will soon vacate.

“Ed is not going to run for the Senate,” Dorgan said during an appearance on The Bill Press Show. “He is a good guy. I like Ed. He is a friend. He has a great show. I’m proud that he is on MSNBC. I understand that [North Dakota Democratic-NPL Party leader Merle] Boucher from state legislature called him. But I don’t think Ed is going to be running for the Senate.”

Press asked why not. “He is not going to leave his MSNBC show to go out and run for the Senate,” said Dorgan, who announced his retirement from office on Tuesday evening.

Short of another candidate with the appeal of Schultz, I don’t think the Democrats have much of a chance of holding onto the North Dakota seat, so we really should get Ed to run. One promising thing is that Ed hasn’t totally written off the idea yet. His responses to a possible run have had a great candidate quality of not being very clear.