Either I don't or the Congressional Democrats don't. It just doesn't make any political sense to me to cave on the Iraq bill, issue where 70% of the public supports you, and you won elections based around the idea of ending the war.

Imagine if it was the other way around. If 70% of the public supported continuing the war, and the Republican party made gains in Congress because of their support for the war, is their any chance they would drop their demands and go along with a Dem plan? I don't see it happening, even in the face of a veto threat. So why would the Dems back down on this one?

Though there have been a ton of diaries about this topic, there is one point that people seem to be ignoring: shock jocks are frequently fired for stepping over the line of good taste.

Here is a list of relatively recent examples:

Is the Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer sabotaging Nancy Pelosi in an attempt to get her job? David Sirota makes a pretty good case for it here:

Nathan Newman has a good post about using the current SS refom debate to acutally make the program better, instead of just defending it. And his idea (eliminating the payroll tax cap, then lowering the payroll tax rate by 2-3%) would frame the issue in a politically advantageous way for Democrats. I think it's an excellent way to attack the issue.

According to this story from the AP,

The Bush administration has developed a formal written strategy for Iraq that envisions using a mix of diplomacy and military force to try to wrest control of dozens of key cities from insurgents before planned January elections, a senior administration official said Friday.

The strategy -- already largely outlined by Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and other top officials in recent weeks -- was developed over the summer as Democratic presidential challenger John Kerry was accusing President Bush of lacking a coherent plan to end the rising violence and pave the way for the withdrawal of American troops.

So, it only took a year and a half and over 1000 American deaths and many more uncounted Iraqi deaths for the Bush administration to develop a plan. What more needs to be said about their level of incompetence?

James Wolcott, whose blog is quickly becoming my favorite, asks a great question:

This raises a question, not a rhetorical question but a real one: When did liberals become such political hypochondriacs? When did they start spazzing at every passing setback and chewing on a security blanket like Gene Wilder in The Producers? You'd think liberalism had never had never notched any victories, that futility was its sole legacy.

If the Freedom Marchers had been as easily a-sceered as today's liberals, they would have looked at the poll numbers favoring segregation and cancelled their bus trip to Mississippi. Labor organizers would never have voted to go on strike for fear of someone taking it the wrong way and complaining to the maitre'd.

He doesn't have the answer, but it is a question that I've wondered about for a while now. Republicans will propose the most ridiculous ideas without a second thought, but Dems are scared to even whisper their liberal ideas. Any guesses why?

Remember after 9/11 and during the run-up to the war in Iraq, when, led by Fox News, all the TV anchors and commentators went out of their way to show how patriotic they were? Remember them wearing their flag pins and claiming to be Americans first and journalist second? Yes, those were great times. I guess that's why I find it so odd that no journalists are coming forward to reveal their sources in the Valerie Plame case. Shouldn't a true American patriot want to help his country find this illegal leaker, instead of hiding behind journalistic ethics? I guess we've found the limits of patriotism.

TNR's latest &c. post is lamenting Kerry's lost Sista Souljah opportunity (in this case, saying he should have bashed the performers at his recent fundraiser in NYC). Now, I know that the TNR-types loved what Bill Clinton did to Sista Souljah (especially considering their view that black Democrats should be seen, not heard). But times have changed, and that sort of distancing from the base in not at all necessary in 2004. On top of that, Kerry's "Sista Souljah" moment already happened, but they're too dense to realize it.

SACRAMENTO, Calif. - As California struggled through the 2000-2001 energy crisis, Enron traders gloated about gouging the state. Now state Attorney General Bill Lockyer says federal regulators are heaping insult upon injury by demanding California pay Enron and other energy companies almost $270 million in refunds.

http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&cid=509&ncid=509&e=32&u=/ap/20040616/ap_ on_bi_ge/energy_refunds_2

Nelson Mandela criticized the Iraq war in his recent  appearance before the British Parliament. But instead of spending any time telling us what he said, most of the article is instead provides a forum for Peter Hitchens' to attack Mandela, calling him "the humane face of an increasingly authoritarian government," someone with "an autocratic streak" who responds harshly to criticism. What the hell? Is the reporter including this attack because of Mandela's opposition to the Iraq War?

http://www.cnn.com/2004/WORLD/africa/05/10/mandela.iraq.ap/index.html

Here's a good explanation by Dan Yankelovich on how the public works through tough issues. Well worth reading and remembering when looking at polls:

The Seven Stages of Public Opinion

Remember this quote from NY Times reporter Elisabeth Bumiller: "I think we were very deferential because ... it's live, it's very intense, it's frightening to stand up there. Think about it, you're standing up on prime-time live TV asking the president of the United States a question when the country's about to go to war. There was a very serious, somber tone that evening, and no one wanted to get into an argument with the president at this very serious time."

So, even though there is plenty to go after Bush on, I doubt that our press corps is up to it.