It may not be high on everyone’s agenda but if Congress stays strong on FISA and retroactive immunity, I think it will go a long, long way towards boosting the approval rating of the House and Senate among progressive Democrats. Something I am more uncertain about is the upcoming testimony of Gen. Petraeus and Ambassador Crocker. I anticipate that they will testify before both the Armed Services Committee (Clinton is a member) and the Foreign Relations Committee (Obama is a member), as well as the respective House committees. Until recently the administration and the media had worked collaboratively to keep Iraq out of the news and paint the surge as a success. Obviously, recent events make that fairy tale an impossible sell to an increasingly restless Congress.
First of all, I spent all last year predicting that the Republicans would submit to a sense of self-preservation and turn on the president and his policy in Iraq. They never did, and the consequences have already been devastating. In many ways the Republicans have already lost the 2008 congressional elections due to the disparity between Democratic and Republican retainment, recruitment, and fundraising.
The Democrats are getting close to the point where they will be disappointed with anything less than 60 senators and another 30 seats in the House. A lot of those gains are already built in. In the Senate the Republicans did not recruit one candidate anywhere that can realistically hope to oust a Democrat (save Louisiana, where they recruited a Democrat). The list of possible House picks-ups is getting close to eighty. With no good news from Iraq and with an incredibly lame-duck administration, I can’t seen the Republicans maintaining the same kind of discipline this spring that they did last year.
On the other hand, the anti-war movement has gone into hibernation, and the Democrats have not articulated what they want in a new Iraq policy. Even Obama and Clinton are only talking about what they will do as president, not what they would like to see done for the rest of this year. I advise them to think about that now and coordinate it with party leaders before Petraeus and Crocker testify again.
Part of the problem is that things look so good for the Democrats that they have no incentive to do anything bold or controversial. Yet, their ability to defy the president is limited, and if they achieve a realigning election in the fall, that will be a gift that keeps on giving for a long, long time.
What’s on your wish list for this year (before November, of course)?
