If President Bush vetoes an Iraq war spending bill as promised, Congress quickly will provide the money without the withdrawal timeline the White House objects to because no lawmaker "wants to play chicken with our troops," Sen. Barack Obama said Sunday.
So Obama, who Sam Graham-Felsen recently called "the major anti-war"candidate, caves to Bush and loses any grip he may have had on such a title. Kos, rightly goes on the attack here, saying that he wished it were an April Fool's Joke.
MyDD, a site which has shown real enthusiasm for Obama, has yet to post something on the front page, but I will be interested to see how they react, especially given Matt Stoller's recent statements about Hillary Clinton and the war.What a ridiculous thing to say. Not only is it bad policy, not only is it bad politics, it's also a terrible negotiating approach.
Instead of threatening Bush with even more restrictions and daring him to veto funding for the troops out of pique, Barack just surrendered to him.
Let me repeat that -- Obama just surrendered to Bush.
If John Edwards is smart he will go on the attack here. The party is desperate for one of the major candidates (with all due to respect to Dennis Kucinich, who is absolutely right about this war and has been since the start) to take an actual anti-war position, and Obama and Clinton have failed the smell test.
That does seem to be where we actually have leverage. Whatever you think about the supplemental fight, our party's standard-bearer at this moment does not represent the party or the country.What is going on with us Democrats? Are we really that stupid?
UPDATE: The guys at MYDD respond.
There is no reason to cave in this fight. Even if you expect it to happen, if you a prominent progressive public figure, there is no reason to publicly predict Democrats will cave. This compromise was just too difficult to forge in the first place--let's not predict its doom just yet.
