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• Monday, February 12, 2007 06:45 PM

  The only viable course

  To pass anything, it will take 60 votes in the Senate, including about 12 Republicans. To enact anything, it will take 2/3rds majorities in both chambers. Knowing that they presently fall far short of those sorts of whip counts, I can understand why the Dem leadership is treading cautiously. (Plus, I think, they are still afraid of being blamed for the "loss of Iraq".)

  I found myself agreeing with the Obama/Rich dialogue in yesterday's Times (Select):

  But he has no messianic pretensions and is enough of a realist to own up to the fact that his proposal has no present chance of becoming law. Nor do any of the other end-the-war plans offered by Congressional Democrats — some overlapping his, some calling for a faster exit than his. If a nonbinding resolution expressing mild criticism of President Bush’s policy can’t even come to a vote in the Senate, legislation demanding actual action is a nonstarter. All the Democrats’ parrying about troop caps, timelines, benchmarks, the cutting off of war funding, whatever, is academic except as an index to the postures being struck by the various presidential hopefuls as they compete for their party’s base. There simply aren’t 60 votes in the Senate to force the hand of a president who, in Mr. Obama’s words, “is hellbent on doing what he’s been doing for the last four years. Unless, of course, Republicans join in. The real point of every Iraq proposal, Mr. Obama observes, is to crank up the political heat until “enough pressure builds within the Republican Party that they essentially revolt.”

  So, what maximizes the pressure? Forcing frequent pro-administration votes would seem productive...

  —Wendell Read Wendell's other letters
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