in the Oct '05 issue. They say it is smart politics for Dems to keep demanding that the administration come up with a set of metrics for success in Iraq--that they could then be measured by.
But they don't really need a specific policy for withdrawal as such, because it wouldn't change any facts on the ground anyway, coming from the minority party, and they risk alienating one portion of the Dem contingent or other, depending on what they say. This may be why some politicians on the right accuse Dems of not having a "plan", trying to goad them into a corner.
That said, I sense a real leadership vacuum opening up now that the "emperor has no clothes" (and finally people are seeing it), and Kerry has a chance to step up and remind people what they missed. Too bad his speeches won't get first-hand TV coverage. Next best thing is pundit-chatter and maybe some good coverage in print.
here's the beginning of the article if you want to read it:
http://www.prospect.org/web/page.ww?section=root&name=ViewPrint&articleId=10294last four PP:
The only substantive way that party leaders challenge the White House is to demand that the administration publish a set of metrics for success that would be subject to public scrutiny. This, again, is smart politics, assuming the mission in Iraq is going south, as it would reveal the administration’s failures; similarly, refusal to publish such criteria would undercut the official line that all is well. As policy, however, it’s hard to see how this could make a difference: While metrics could help make this clearer to the public, they can’t change the facts on the ground.
In an August 24 op-ed, Gary Hart challenged directly, accusing Democrats of lacking the “courage” to call for withdrawal. And he’s right: Opposition to withdrawal seems overwhelmingly political. Wesley Clark, who as a war opponent is seen by many hawks as an effective spokesman against a timetable, has warned in the pages of The Washington Post and in public speeches that we must “change the course” in Iraq “before it’s too late.” I asked Clark when we might know that the window of opportunity had closed, and he dodged, saying only, “We’re still far from that point.” Biden, when asked for a response to Hart on the August 28 edition of This Week, declined to do so in any meaningful way, offering instead the bizarre reply that “for me to defend myself against Gary Hart is kind of ludicrous to begin with. I kind of resent it, to tell the truth.”
But despite the careful efforts at political positioning and the blows President Bush has taken on the Iraq issue, Democrats of all stripes face a painful political problem of their own. Most polls have support for withdrawal in the near future in the low 40s. That’s not nearly enough for an anti-war campaign to win. At the same time, those numbers suggest that an overwhelming majority of actual Democratic voters want to end the war soon. It’s hard to imagine Democratic politicians credibly positioning themselves as the leaders of a party of better war management as long as it’s clear that, in office, they’d be beholden to a deeply anti-war base. Moreover, there’s reason to think that even if a majority of Americans do come to favor abandoning the war effort, advocating withdrawal would be a poor political strategy. Defeatism, as the 1972 election showed, is not a very appealing political product, even in the context of a deeply unpopular war.
More convincing anti-war arguments, centered on the case that withdrawal could be a positive contribution to Iraq’s stability, might do the trick, but bucking majority opinion is something politicians are always loath to do. Thus, it’s no surprise that many Democrats seem to feel that caution is the better part of valor on this issue, and that the best thing to do is to say as little as possible. Iraq, after all, is a mess of the president’s creation, not theirs, and no honest policy proposal can be as appealing as the fantasy universe of Bush’s speeches. Poking the occasional hole in that bubble and then lying low while hoping the administration implodes seems to make sense, though that strategy risks repeating the debacle of 2002, when the politics of evasion went down to massive defeat. Under the circumstances, though, it might be best to simply abandon the quest for party unity and to watch the midterms closely. The fortunes of the hawks and doves in those elections should help guide the Democrat platform as they head into 2008.
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