Personally, I was paying no attention to this ridiculous harebrained scheme that Senator Joe Biden dreamed up because, except for the usual DC Gasbags, no one in the country was going to pay attention or give a darn about Biden's stupid nonbinding resolution. Beside, as originally drafted, it was not going to do any damage.

The patent ridiculousness of it all was actually revealed by Biden himself when he was crowing about it last week:

Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware, the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, predicted today that no more than 20 senators would voice support for the president’s troop increase in Iraq when the Senate debates resolutions opposing that plan. It remains to be seen whether Mr. Biden’s prediction will come true once the debate begins this week or next. The senator emphasized that a full debate by the Senate over President Bush’s troop increase was more important than the actual vote totals that the various resolutions get. . . . To proceed now with resolutions critical of the president, Mr. Lugar said, could be harmful “around the world as well as in our body politic.” . . . Mr. Biden tried to flip Mr. Lugar’s assertion, crediting the debate in Washington for helping change behavior in Baghdad and in the White House. “Maybe the president wouldn’t be calling Senator Lugar at five minutes to 8 were this resolution not out there,” Mr. Biden said. “I respectfully suggest the ground has moved beneath the president’s feet.”

You see, in Joe Biden's world, having President Bush CALL a Republican Senator BEFORE he ignored the "disapproval" of the Senate, is somehow meaningful. Senator Biden is not a stupid man, except when it comes to politics. Consider this Biden doozy:

"If you really want to change the situation on the ground, demonstrate to the president he's on his own," said Senator Joseph R. Biden Jr., chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee. "That will spark real change."

Honestly, that is one for the ages. I don't think Senator Reid was quite as delusional as Biden, but the Senate Democratic leadership did seem to buy into this nonsense:

Democrats made clear that the resolutions -- which would do nothing in practical terms to block Mr. Bush's intention to increase the United States military presence in Iraq -- would be the minimum steps they would pursue. They did not rule out eventually considering more muscular responses, like seeking to cap the number of troops being deployed to Iraq or limiting financing for the war -- steps that could provoke a Constitutional and political showdown over the president's power to wage war. . . . Democratic leaders said that for now they favored the less-divisive approach of simply asking senators to cast a vote on a nonbinding resolution for or against the plan. . . . "We believe that there is a number of Republicans who will join with us to say no to escalation," said the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada. "I really believe that if we can come up with a bipartisan approach to this escalation, we will do more to change the direction of that war in Iraq than any other thing that we can do."

The Reid theory, it seems to me, was to try and move incrementally in order to bring as many Republicans along as possible so that either the President will modify his policies or when ACTUAL MEANINGFUL steps are taken, Reid will have the votes to defeat a filibuster. This is why, imo, Reid caved into to John Warner on the nonbinding resolution. But this is a fool's errand. And as often happens when one goes on a fool's errand, Reid had the Dems on the precipice of a truly collosal mistake - Reid had Dems on the brink of embracing Bush's Iraq strategy, with the exception of the escalation.

Obviously, Bush is not going to listen to anybody. And Reid will never get enough Republicans to support real efforts to change course. Other than Chuck Hagel, no other Republican is seeking anything but political cover. And Republicans running for President will be competing to be the closest to Bush, for the GOP primary voters is simply nuts and will never turn against Bush and will resent any Republican that does turn against Bush.

The Congressional Democratic leadership needs to remember what was forgotten by Dem Presidential candiates to be in 2002, that the NEXT elections are in November 2008. They need to think about how what they do now will look THEN, not how it will look now (by the way, I think it will look pretty good NOW in most of the country to strongly oppose Bush on Iraq.)

To some, Senator Feingold's proposal appears too strong today. And maybe for some Red State Dems it is - NOW. But they must always keep in mind that it will not matter how it appears NOW, what matters is how it will appear in November 2008.

Of course, if all we consider is what is the right policy, then a cutoff of funding as soon as possible is the right thing to do. But politicians must deal with the politics, and I do not hold that against them. But I do hold practicing stupid politics against them. And that is precisely what Senator Reid and Senator Levin engaged in when they let Senator Warner roll them.

Thank Gawd Mitch McConnell and the Republicans proved to be stupider on this. The GOP has snatched defeat from the jaws of victory after the Deomcrats tried their hardest to do the same thing.

Thank you again Mitch McConnell for being a dumbass.