Sen. John Hoeven (R-N.D.) and Sen. Richard Blumenthal (D-Conn.)

Not many party strategists were talking last night, but come January 2011, that’s who many expect to be filling the Senate seats of, respectively, Byron Dorgan and Chris Dodd.

Hoeven, the phenomenally popular governor of North Dakota since 2000, was already leagues ahead of Dorgan in polls that assumed the senator would run for re-election. Democrats, taken by surprise, don’t have a deep bench in the state. NRSC and RNC comments on the Dorgan retirement were joyful–it “highlights just how vulnerable both Senate and House Democrats have become,” said Michael Steele.

Blumenthal, the equally popular attorney general of Connecticut since 1990, has frustrated Democrats with his unwillingness to jump into tougher statewide races. But Dodd is vacating the first open Senate seat in the state since 1980. This is the sort of race, say Democrats, that the attorney general has been waiting for–Republican frontrunner Rob Simmons had been benefiting from Dodd’s scandals.