Dems Could Do Far More To End Iraq War - Jim VandeHei and John F. Harris

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... It takes 60 votes to end debate in the Senate, two-thirds of both chambers to override a presidential veto. These answers are correct — and misleading almost to the point of deception.

We’re not in the business of giving politicians advice. But it’s a simple truth, whether you support the war or not: There is a lot more Democrats could do to change, or at least challenge, the politics of the war in Washington, even if they do not have the numbers to impose new policies on President Bush.

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) could force a vote a day over Iraq. She could keep the House in session all night, over weekends and through planned vacations. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.) could let filibusters run from now till Christmas rather than yield to pro-war Republicans. Such tactics might or might not be politically sensible, but in their absence, anti-war lawmakers can hardly say they have done everything possible to challenge the war and bring attention to their cause.

Lawmakers over the past generation have threatened and sometimes carried out such extreme parliamentary maneuvers over less consequential matters than dying soldiers. Republican leaders a few years ago warned they would pursue the “nuclear option” and rewrite Senate rules if Democrats tried to block Bush’s judicial nominees. In the 1980s, some Republicans contemplated chaining themselves to pillars of the Capitol to protest a disputed congressional election in Indiana.

Democrats, in on-the-record and on-background interviews, said they do not do these things because they would be bad politics. Democrats in the House and Senate would splinter over such extremist measures. In closed-door caucus meetings, members say, Democratic leaders like Reps. Steny H. Hoyer (D-Md.) and Rahm Emanuel (D-Ill.) have carried the day by warning that there is no appetite for such tactics in the districts of vulnerable Democrats, upon whom the party’s new majority status depends. Many of these districts are in red states with rural regions filled with military families.

Above all, Democrats do not wish to open themselves to a charge they believe is demagogic, but effective — that they are turning their backs on troops in the field. “People have made the intellectual distinction between the war and the warrior,” one House Democratic leader told us. “Bush has hidden behind the kids and held us hostage.”

Fair enough. But this calculation does not erase the gaping chasm between the visceral urgency claimed by congressional war opponents and the conventionality of their political strategy in trying to end it. This is why Democratic activists are growing increasingly agitated.

Galling as it may be to Democrats, Bush still can claim to be acting with more clarity and courage than the congressional majority.

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More: http://dyn.politico.com/printstory.cfm?uuid=44406198-3048-5C12-00A9AD81C51A647A

Yep... we've been infected by the muddle of the middle.

:mad:

the Democratic Leadership was doing exactly that. These two GOP tools would be writing about how the Democrats are blocking the Senate, stopping the country for pure political reasons.

This does not mean I do not believe the Democrats could do more, just that I question the motives of those writing this article. Never forget that VandeHei's wife was working for Tom Delay and that John Harris co-wrote a wonderful book expressing among other things how Drudge was a model in political reporting.

If you get the chance, maybe you could point out where they're wrong.

:shrug:

Of course, you may not care, but I do.

If you believe that Bush has more moral clarity than the Democratic leadership, feel free. But given the general tone of the article, you have to conclude that we are talking not only about Reid, Pelosi, and Hoyer, but about people like Lynn Woosley, who has fought to get out of Iraq for months, and the few others like that. This article has an agenda: make sure that the House and Senate has a GOP majority in 2008, by demeaning ALL democrats from Feingold to Nelson and from Kucinich to Bean.

We are not going to get out of Iraq by sending Republicans to Congress and this is the goal of this article.