Coulda, woulda, shoulda in Senate race?

Do you suppose any well-known Democrats are kicking themselves in the rear, at least mentally, over what's happening in the U.S. Senate race? Remember last year, when such Democrats as Mike Easley, state Rep. Grier Martin, U.S. Rep. Brad Miller and state Treasurer Richard Moore were still pondering their political futures? And whether they ought to tackle incumbent U.S. Sen. Elizabeth Dole, R- N.C. in her first re-election campaign?
None of them wanted to challenge her, and for good reason. She looked hard to beat a year ago. She was a good campaigner in 2002 when she dispatched Erskine Bowles for Jesse Helms' old seat. And even with the war in Iraq, a lot of folks thought she'd be hard to beat in 2008. Me, too.
But Sen. Kay Hagan, D-Guilford, wanted in. She got talked out of it for a while when it looked as if someone better known would run, and then Gov. Jim Hunt, among others, talked her back into it when the only enthusiastic candidate was Chapel Hill businessman Jim Neal.
Hagan beat Neal last spring in the Democratic primary and has run a hard campaign against Dole, who suffers from her connection to an unpopular president, a sinking national economy and an impression that she hasn't spent all that much time in the state.
How's Hagan doing? In one poll -- Public Policy Polling's latest -- she's up by 8 points.
"Kay Hagan now has her largest lead yet in North Carolina's Senate race. She led by 5 points a week ago and a single point three weeks ago," writes Tom Jensen of PPP. Here's a link to the poll.
That may not mean anything on Nov. 4. It's several lifetimes between now and the election. But in this poll she's up 8 just 17 days before early voting begins. I imagine Dole's worried, Hagan's happy and those guys who didn't get into the race? They could be thinking about what might have been.
Coulda, woulda, shoulda.