If the Democrats nominated Byron Dorgan, that would make my life really, really difficult if the GOP nominates a candidate I'm less than enamoured with. Dorgan seems to have his head screwed on right on several important issues, and recently made a superb speech ripping unfettered free trade to shreds - the first time I've seen any Senator do so on the Floor. I'm sure that if I looked more closely at his record, I'd find things that are objectionable - but at first impressions, he seems like a good candidate for the other party. But, as Thomas Reed said, "they could do a lot worse, and I suspect that they will".
There's a large difference between Dorgan and any Republican. He was one of only 25 to vote against the bamkruptcy bill, one of only 26 to vote against the class action bill, and one of only 36 to vote against Gonzales.
In many of those cases most of the red state Senators voted the wrong way.