One of the ways I am working to do this is through the Bush Dog Democrat campaign. Bush Dog Democrats are Democrats in the House who voted for the blank check bill last Spring to fund the war without restrictions and voted for an expansion of Bush's wiretapping authority this summer. There are 39 of them, and they are mostly but not entirely Southern white male conservative Democrats. It's a coalition of slavish Bush enablers within the Democratic party who have until now faced no pressure from activists. As a first step to combat this caucus, I am asking bloggers to profile a Bush Dog Democrat, so that we get to know them up close and learn who they are and why they do what they do. Perhaps some of them can be convinced to change their positions once they know how frustrated the public really is with this war, though my experience fighting Joe Lieberman in Connecticut in 2006 suggests otherwise.

So far, we've profiled around 30 of them, and there will be additional organizing activities and potentially even primaries. The goal is clear: raise the political costs of keeping the war going for the political elites that keep us there, and that means naming the problem within the party. That's where the Bush Dog Democrats campaign came from, and it's worked. Over the past two weeks, we've created 10,000 Google mentions of Bush Dog Democrats, been mentioned across the national blogosphere, in local blogs, in USA Today, in the Politico, and the New York Observer. There's more media to come, and potentially some advertising and organizing work as well. Has it ended the war? No, but it's been two weeks, and it has important begun the long process of raising the costs for corrupt elites by naming names.

Anyway, it's not a particularly controversial statement to think that the war will not end until 2009 at the earliest. Asserting otherwise is dishonest at best, naive at worst. I don't really understand Big Tent Democrats' strategic arguments, but I think part of the confusion comes down to a sense of what role we play in the political system. BTD thinks that he can offer advice to Democrats in Congress, and they will take it. He thinks, though I could be wrong, that telling Democratic members not to fund the war on a blog is a strategy. I don't think that most Democrats in Congress particularly care what I say, or what any blogger says, and I don't have the tens of millions of dollars to make them care. I am an activist, and I know that Congress doesn't revolve around my blogging. Politicians respond to pressure and arguments, and I am trying to offer that pressure through a mixture of sticks, like the Bush Dog Democrat campaign, and carrots, fundraising and activism for candidates like Darcy Burner and Donna Edwards.

I invite Big Tent Democrat to profile one of these Bush Dog Democrats, to raise money for antiwar candidates, or to come up with his own strategy to strategically criticize or organize around core pillars that support our war-making establishment. You should ask that he find a place for YOU to be active, a place for you to put your money and/or your time to end the war. I have offered my strategy, and I am working on my own piece of it along with many others. So what about it, Big Tent Democrat? How about taking one of these Bush Dog Democrats and writing a profile?

I mean, this war and its consequences will be with us for a very long time, and there's enough work for all of us to do.