What Else Could The Democrats Do?

Shaun Mullen at The Moderate Voice has a post up expressing his dissatisfaction with the democratic decision to leave out any mention of timetables in the Iraq spending bill.

I agree wholeheartedly with his feelings of betrayal, but I have thought long and hard on this and I cannot come up with any alternative scenario that Bush would not veto.

The Democrats were given an unambiguous mandate in the mid-term elections to bring the troops home. Even though they are short of a veto-proof majority, an increasing number of Republicans were jumping ship to join them in agreeing to legislation with a troop withdrawal timeline.

I'm not sure about what other senators would join Chuck Hagel and Gordon Smith and oppose Bush. Maybe Susan Collins or Olympia Snowe, but never enough to sustain a veto. Lindsey Graham and John McCain didn't vote the last time and you know how they will vote.

The last vote was 51-46 so you add a couple to the nays and add three to the yeas and you still are far short of the 60 they need.

With the current makeup of the Senate the democrats are never going to come up with a spending bill that would over-ride Bush's veto. The republicans will not give an inch on this, they can't, it is all they have. If they can't at least pull out the appearance of a draw in Iraq their party is going down in flames.

The other thing that can be done is just not presenting a bill, but that is political suicide as the polls are pretty clear that although the large majority wants out of Iraq, an equally large majority is opposed to cutting any funding that affects the safety of the troops.

Give the bastard the bill he wants and make sure that America understands that this is the republican's war and they are loyal to Bush and not to the people.

It's time for the democrats to get back to their domestic agenda and let Mr. Bush have his funding, I don't see where they have any choice.

Jim Martin