| I'm beginning to tire of the notion that there has been some great pressure brought to bear by the antiwar base of the Democratic Party.
In the Senate, the crucible of the debate, many Republicans have grown increasingly skeptical of the president's policy, though they are unwilling to go as far Democrats. And Democratic leaders, determined to end the war on their terms and under intense pressure from their antiwar base, have refused to yield enough ground to accommodate them.
In reality, the antiwar base has been as meek as lambs to the Democratic Party. First of all, the idea that there is nothing the Democrats can or could have done to stop the war is simply nonsense. The Bush administration admits as much in an article in the Washington Post on dissent around the surge strategy when it was first announced.
"There was a real question about whether we'd be able to do this at all," said a White House aide. Within five weeks, the House had voted to oppose the troop buildup, and Democratic leaders were vowing to tie Bush's hands. Most worrisome was the discontent among Republicans. "It could have potentially strangled this strategy in the crib," Wehner said.
The Democrats could have stopped it. They didn't. Democrats like Joe Biden are saying there's nothing they can do to stop the war, and progressives like Barbara Boxer are echoing his point. The narrative undergirding a lot of the stories here are that Democrats are under pressure from their antiwar base, but are standing up to it. That is a false narrative. Politicians respond to pressure, and that means the backsliding we've seen over the past six months is a result of the Democrats not feeling pressure on Iraq, or more likely, feeling more from elites and the right than from the Democratic base. When you look at the Presidential context, this is basically indisputable. Democratic base voters think that the leading candidates will withdraw all troops from Iraq, which is simply untrue. While the argument that Democrats in Congress are boxed in by procedural contraints holds some water, there is no conceivable reason why Democratic Presidential candidates should support keeping troops in Iraq... unless they really just want to keep troops in Iraq. That this mass deception is allowed to continue suggests that there is very little pressure on Democrats to end the war.
Moveon, for instance, has run one ad against Brian Baird, which was an extremely small purchase. By contrast, the White House approved group Freedom Watch is spending $15 million targeting Republicans, including an incredibly quick response helping Brian Baird. And though I have heard compliments from insiders about going after Baird, the anger at the Bush Dog campaign, which is simply designed to offer criticism, is remarkable. Anonymous Democratic aides are now yelping, 'what in the world are they thinking', as if offering pressure in the form of criticism and primary challenges is completely novel. And in fact, it is. There is still no organized funded campaign to recruit antiwar or progressive primary challengers (paging 'They Work for Us').
But it goes beyond primary challenges. Joe Biden went on Meet the Press yesterday and said there is nothing Democrats can do to end the war, and that he will vote for funding no matter what. He's up for reelection in 2008, and he's running for President. There was not one statement attacking Biden for his hawkish stance. This is consistent. The very liberal George Miller has echoed the line of funding the troops, and only Markos is pushing back on the Presidentials refusing to talk about the next supplemental; funding the troops, which is exactly 100% the wrong frame, is the message of the Democratic Party, and there is zero organized pushback.
If we can't get the Presidential candidates to even have a debate about troop levels in Iraq, don't tell me there's an antiwar movement in this country putting pressure on the Democrats.
Now, what this means is that we do start putting pressure on Democratic leaders, it's going to draw squeals very quickly. There's a lot of upside here. Moreover, the strategy of the antiwar movement has been to pressure the Republicans, assuming good faith behavior by Democratic insiders. That was a strategy that has helped move numbers against Republicans, and it has usefully showed Democratic leaders to be acting in bad faith. Now that the argument has been made, it's incumbent upon all of us to genuinely begin putting pressure on Democratic leaders, especially the Presidential canddiates, as aggressively as possible. |
