CQ Politics reports:
By the time Congress finishes a supplemental spending plan for the Iraq War, senior Democrats say, it is likely that voters in Iowa, New Hampshire, Nevada and South Carolina will have made their choice on White House hopefuls.
The “Super Tuesday” primaries probably will be over, too.
The Democrats’ decision to delay the supplemental arises out of two distinct problems they have. The first is the scheduling crunch. They have to pass their annual appropriations bills (today they begin a new fiscal year on a continuing resolution). Facing a president resolved to politicize the appropriations process, the Dems need to tone down the hyperpartisanship. Taking the Iraq debate off the table might improve their prospects of passing spending bills over the president’s objections. Regardless, they need all the available floortime for debate on the appropriations bills.
The second problem is the Democrats’ inability to reach a consensus on what to do about the supplemental. September did not work out as planned and they do not have the strength to force timelines or to withhold funding. The dynamics will be different and, perhaps, more favorable next January-February.
No one has more direct influence over the supplemental process than Defense Appropriations Subcommittee chairman John Murtha.
Murtha, a close adviser to Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said he has advised the leadership to put off the supplemental spending debate until early 2008 to allow time for Democrats to form more consensus on Iraq.
The supplemental will be the vehicle for the big showdown on whether to continue funding for the war, and “it will be decided in January or early February,” he said.
One unintended (and I do believe it is unintended) consequence of this delay may be to severely undermine Hillary Clinton’s chances of winning the nomination. Now…to be sure, Hillary is going to triangulate this vote for all it is worth.
Clinton, New York’s junior senator and the front-runner so far for the Democratic presidential nomination, said on “Meet the Press” on Sept. 23 that she would vote against the next supplemental “because I think that it’s the only way that we can demonstrate clearly that we have to change direction.”
But she has also distanced herself from proposals that would rapidly reduce troop levels and end the war next year.
John Kerry faced a similar situation in the fall of 2003. Anti-war sentiment in the Democratic primary electorate mandated that he vote against the supplemental war funding (although he famously voted for the war funding in another bill, before he voted against the bill that passed). That vote both helped win Kerry the nomination and lose him the general election. But we should be careful in making a direct comparison between the two votes.
This time a vote against the supplemental is a no-brainer, and it won’t hurt in the general. The real issues will be whether to have a vote on the supplemental at all, whether to filibuster that vote unless it has hard timelines, and how soon can the candidates promise that we will be out of Iraq. In this case, the three front-runners have a distinct disadvantage against the insurgent campaigns of Dodd, Richardson, and Kucinich, who will all be taking a much harder line.
At the Democratic presidential debate in Hanover, N.H., on Sept. 26, [Hillary] said it would be “my goal to have all troops out by the end of my first term.”
But she and the two other Democratic front-runners, Sen. Barack Obama of Illinois and former Sen. John Edwards of North Carolina (1999-2005), declined to promise that all troops would be withdrawn from Iraq by the end of their first term.
Whether you consider their position to be prudent and candid or not, it will be easily exploitable by the second-tier candidates. Sen. Dodd, for example, can try to lead a filibuster of the bill among the Democratic caucus in the Senate. If Clinton and Obama refuse to join him, they can expect to take a serious hit at the polls. That is why timing the supplemental debate to correspond with the primaries is bad news for the front-runners, and Hillary in particular.
The following comment from Harry Reid makes clear how high the stakes will be:
Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., said he believed that the Democratic presidential candidates in the Senate — who also include Joseph R. Biden Jr. of Delaware and Christopher J. Dodd of Connecticut — were already having a big impact on the Iraq debate by promoting their own initiatives.
Reid said he had made no decision on when the supplemental would move but added that the emergence of a presumptive Democratic nominee would help build consensus on Iraq.
Plus, he said, “It will take a lot of attention off of me, which will be nice.”
The early primaries and caucuses, then, will be referendums on leadership, especially for the candidates that are serving in the Senate. Hillary’s strategy of voting against a bill, but doing nothing to prevent it from coming to the floor in the first place, and nothing to filibuster it, will place her at odds with the voters. Obama will face they same tortured options. Can Edwards step up and exploit this? Can Dodd? Or Richardson?
An upset victory just become much more likely.
