There's something brewing on the left side of the web, and it just might mean good news for Chris Dodd's presidential candidacy. Take a look at the bump in his blog mentions on our Technorati chart. The last time he stood out from the second-tier pack anywhere near this much was at the beginning August, when he went on the Bill O'Reilly show and his staff quickly made sure the video circulated at the YearlyKos conference and elsewhere online.

Matt Stoller and Chris Bowers are both asking "why not Dodd?" in side-by-side posts on their influential blog OpenLeft, prompted not just by Dodd's promise to filibuster the current FISA bill but also other gutsy (to them) positions he has taken on Iraq, on habeas corpus and similar issues of importance to the left netroots. There's also clearly a rising tide of unhappiness with Barack Obama, expressed by Stoller as well as bloggers like Markos Moulitsas, Josh Marshall and Jane Hamsher.

So far, however, there's no sign of a shift in other indications of support for Dodd or disappointment in Obama. One might expect to see Dodd's friends data on MySpace or Facebook to rise, or Obama's to fall. I guess we'll have to wait and see.