The American people have already made it clear that
53% of them want the US out of Iraq - preferably within a 1 year timetable. If Iraq is important, some political party could sweep the nation in November by standing up for those voters. Man, this makes things easy for an opposition party. How could anyone fumble it?
Surprise! Just Russ Feingold, Barbara Boxer, John Kerry and ten other Senators think those 53% of Americans deserve representation. An overwhelming bipartisan 87 Senators agree Iraq policy shouldn't be subject to majority rule.
Dems have a much cleverer Iraq strategy, below the fold.
Turns out that if you won't stand up for the 53%, and you exclude the 33% that support Bush unconditionally, there's always the 14% who hope to shrink the current troop levels by an unspecified amount next year. That's evidently the market most Democrats are targeting.
Of course, Bush will reduce troop levels slightly this year anyway, guaranteeing that instead of winning 53% of the electorate, the Democratic Iraq policy won't win the party a single vote.
Welcome to the Democratic Party strategy for 2006. If the 31 anti-democracy Democrats (including 6 pro-Bush Senators) get 14% of the vote, perhaps we Kossacks should help explain, to people who think Iraq is important, why that isn't all they deserve.
By the way, Noam Chomsky refers to this situation as a democracy deficit, where the things people clearly want are ignored by the people they supposedly elected. It's a salient property of failed states, including banana republics, dictatorships, Iraq, and the US.
Take the poll anyway.