The Washington Post has a classic example of why the Democrats have a problem. While party leadership is happily hopping down the "pull the troops out" trail, candidates in close elections are resoundingly NOT following that lead.
Most Democratic candidates in competitive congressional races are opposed to setting a timetable for pulling U.S. troops out of Iraq, rejecting pressure from liberal activists to demand a quick end to the three-year-old military conflict.
Of the 59 Democrats in hotly contested House and Senate races, a majority agree with the Bush administration that it would be unwise to set a specific schedule for troop withdrawal, and only a few are calling for substantial troop reductions to begin this year, according to a Washington Post survey of the campaigns.
The large number of Democrats opposed to a strict timeline for ending the military operations runs contrary to the assertion by President Bush and top Republicans that Democrats want to "cut and run" amid mounting casualties and signs of civil war. At the same time, the decision by many Democrats to refrain from advocating a specific plan for withdrawal complicates their leaders' efforts to convince voters that they offer a clear new direction for the increasingly unpopular war.
"It is like dropping a raw egg and asking me what my plans are for putting it back together," said Chris Murphy, the Democrat challenging Rep. Nancy L. Johnson (R-Conn.). Murphy favors bringing home National Guard and reserve units, or about 25,000 of the 138,000 U.S. troops stationed in Iraq, beginning next year, and leaving it to Bush's military commanders to determine the rest of the exit strategy.
Although the left-leaning activists in the party want to nationalize the election, the local candidates may be in a bind if they succeed. I suspect that a lot of average people in this country may not be happy with the war, but they would be really unhappy to see it turned into a loss because of partisan politics, too.
It’s already a loss, mate. How many more people have to die before it becomes clear even to the likes of you? America has lost this war. You control nothing outside of the area that you can see through your gunsights. And as soon as you swing your weapon in a different direction, you’ve lost control of what you just surveyed. But you’ll keep killing, and sowing chaos, until your own troops get so sick of being made into senseless cannon fodder that they rebel, just as they did in Vietnam. Only then, when the men turn their guns on themselves, will you acknowledge that you’ve lost. But you have. LOST THE WAR, MATE!