May 23, 2007 3:02 PM

What the Democratic Blank Check on Iraq Means

I've been trying to formulate my thoughts on Democrats' capitulation on the Iraq War for some time now. Though it may seem like Democratic leaders' decision this week to try to give President Bush a blank check is sudden, it's not - this is what many of us knew would happen, despite our best efforts to prevent it. Because there is so much going on, I'm going to break my thoughts down in bite-sized snippets in the extended entry. Bottom line - if the Democrats do not vote down the blank check Iraq War supplemental bill they are proposing, they will be complicit in the war, and should expect to feel the consequences. Use Working Assets' tool to contact your lawmaker and tell them to vote against this blank check. Then go read the extended entry.

YOU VOTE FOR IT, YOU OWN IT

In traveling all over the country talking to people as I report my next book, I have long believed Sen. Russ Feingold (D-WI) was right when in March he said, "The realization is growing that the only way to stop this thing is to use our power." I've talked to politicians who privately tell me they are afraid to "take political ownership" of the war by using their power to end it. Yet, if you can get past the nausea that may overcome you when you hear a politician focus on the politics while people die, it's clear that even on the politics Feingold is right. "If the Democrats don’t use their power, when we’re in the majority in both houses, we’re going to start owning this war," he said back in March. "It is George Bush’s war, but if we don’t get serious we’re going to start owning this war." This is a key political point many politicians are forgetting right now. Bush may have started the war, and may politically "own" the war, but he was elected in 2004 IN SPITE of that. Put another way, he was elected on honest pretenses when it came to the war. Democrats, by contrast, were put into office in 2006 because they promised to end the war. Thus, turning around and becoming complicit in the war arguably gives them even GREATER ownership of the war than Bush, because they are so clearly breaking their word to the country.

STOP WHINING ABOUT BUSH, YOU HAVE RESPONSIBILITY AND EVERYONE KNOWS IT

Various Democrats are doing their best efforts to pretend they have no ability to stop the war, as if they are innocent bystanders. House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), for instance, is saying she will vote against the blank check bill, but she won't use her power to actually stop the bill from moving forward - as if she's just a lowly back bencher who has no power.

Similarly, many lawmakers keep saying that it's Bush responsibility - not theirs - to develop a plan to end the war. That may be true - but that doesn't mean lawmakers don't have many different ways to force him to develop a plan. For instance, I've suggested a method of doing so through a non-partisan commission. Another way to do it is through timelines tied to funding. Media zombies may regurgitate laughable right-wing lies about American troops having to run naked and unarmed through the streets of Baghdad should Congress dare to exercise its constitutional power of the purse, but the reality is if Congress simply said funding would be cut off on a certain date, that would force the Bush White House and military commanders to come up with a plan for redeployment.

To sum up - every time a Democrat claims they can't stop the war, they make themselves look stupid. Additionally, every time a Democrat says they are doing everything in their power to stop the war while refusing to use the powers they have they make themselves look like liars. As just one example, the next time you hear a Senator (and in particular, a Senator running for president) say they are using every resource at their disposal to end the war, you ask yourself why you don't see them on the Senate floor right at that moment reading the names of the troops who have been killed and then reading names out of a phone book in an effort to use Old School filibuster tactics to bring Congress to a screeching halt.

STOP PRETENDING THIS IS A VICTORY

As an addendum to the last point, Democrats would be wise to stop pretending that giving Bush a blank check is some sort of incredible victory for the vast majority of Americans who voted for Democrats in 2006 because Democrats promised to end the war. Such Orwellian claims insult the public. For example, when Rep. Rahm Emanuel (D-IL) stands in front of a camera and claims the blank check bill being proposed is "the beginning of the end of the president’s policy in Iraq" he is really saying "I think voters are so utterly stupid that I can lie to their faces on national television." The only thing this bill may be the beginning of the end of is Democrats majority.

PREVIOUS VOTE AND VETO WERE CRITICAL

There are some who will say that because we have ended up with Democrats working to give President Bush a blank check, there was no point in supporting the move to send him that first bill that included enforceable, binding language to begin a withdrawal. That argument is absurd. Just because things have gone wrong, doesn't mean they weren't going somewhat right - at least for a time. I would argue that had Democrats followed the advice of many of us and kept sending Bush similar bills with similar binding language, they would have further isolated Bush and therefore brought us closer to ending the war. That they have instead capitulated is not a commentary on the bill they sent him before and that was vetoed, but a commentary on Democrats' lack of intenstinal fortitude for the long-haul.

LESSON MUST BE LEARNED - IT'S NOT "SHOW FRIENDS," IT'S "SHOW BUSINESS"

There's a famous line in Jerry Maguire where Bob Sugar reminds his clients "It's not show friends, it's show business." This is a lesson some in the progressive movement seemed to have forgotten in the excitement after the 2006 election. For months, much of our energy has been spent focusing antiwar pressure on Republican lawmakers vulnerable in 2008. While that may meld two important goals - ending the war and defeating right-wing conservatives - it has come at the expense of focusing equally intense pressure on Democrats. Other than Moveon's recent (and fairly small) radio ad buy against Sen. Carl Levin (D-MI) and House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer (D-MD), progressive groups have shown relatively little appetite for going after Democrats, even as we see so clearly right now that Democrats are at least as big an obstruction to ending the war as Republicans. While it's great that lots of groups are now saying Democrats should oppose the blank check bill that will likely be voted on tomorrow, the truth is this blank check is the fruits of the progressive movement's reluctance to preemptively make Democrats feel electoral pain many months ago.

Whether this reluctance is due to Partisan War Syndrome or D.C. insiderism among antiwar groups who don't want to be mean to their "friends" in the Democratic Party isn't important - what's important is that we now understand that unless we create fear among Democrats well before the inevitable next vote on Iraq occurs, we will face the exact same blank check outcome. It's time for the progressive movement to mature and embrace its role as a distinct entity that sees the Democratic Party as a means, not an end (just as the conservative movement embraces a similar role in relation to the GOP). That means everything from primary challenges, to well-funded television ads against those who are undermining the will of the American people, who polls show clearly support congressional efforts to end the war.

The Democratic Party is a party that is now refusing to stand up to a president who has reached the lowest presidential polling numbers in three decades - and they are refusing to stand up to him on an issue they were elected on, and which the public feels passionately about. They are not only dropping the timelines for withdrawal, but Congressional Quarterly now reports that the bill they are pushing "is expected to drop waivable troop readiness standards" - that is, dropping provisions that Bush would be allowed to ignore that merely ask him to better equip our troops in Iraq. They are doing this just as Hearst Newspapers report the President is quietly engineering a "second surge" escalation of our military presence in Iraq that could end up seeing over 200,000 of our troops deployed there. If we can't understand that this pathetic situation requires us to start seeing politics not as "show friends" but "show business" then we aren't much of a movement at all.