How do I reconnect a disconnected socket?

[Jason Kristoff]

I'm trying to make something that once it is disconnected will 
automatically try to reconnect.  I'll add some more features in later so 
it doesn't hammer the server but right now I just want to keep it simple 
and get that part working.  The problem is that when I use sock.close I 
get an error message of
Bad File Descriptor
and if I either use shutdown or just go straight to reconnecting I get:
Transport endpoint is already connected

This is what I've got right now:

#! /usr/bin/env python
import socket, string
sock = socket.socket(socket.AF_INET, socket.SOCK_STREAM)
def doconn():
     sock.connect(("localhost", 1234))
def dodiscon():
     sock.close()
     doconn()

doconn()

while (1):
     buffer = sock.recv(1024)
     if not buffer:
         dodiscon()