ShareThisBy EDWARD EPSTEIN
San Francisco Chronicle
Thursday, July 19, 2007
Democratic Senate leaders knew going into Wednesday's procedural roll call on their proposal to withdraw most U.S. forces from Iraq that they didn't have the votes to win, but victory wasn't their goal.
Instead, the Democrats forced the Senate into a marathon 19-hour debate as a way of putting pressure on Republicans for their continued support of President Bush's Iraq policy, which polls show is opposed by large majorities of the American public.
And the Democrats used the publicity they knew their talkathon would generate to spotlight a small group of Republican senators up for re-election in 2008 who haven't yet split with Bush over the war and whose seats are prime Democratic targets.
The Democrats' tactic was accompanied by the mobilization of antiwar groups that organized grass-roots meetings across the country and urged voters to call their senators to encourage their support for the withdrawal measure offered by Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island. The party's official campaign arm, the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, chimed in with a quick purchase of TV spots aimed at four of the targeted Republicans, Sens. Norm Coleman of Minnesota, John Sununu of New Hampshire, Susan Collins of Maine and Mitch McConnell of Kentucky.
Among the four, only Collins sided with Democrats, who fell eight votes short of the 60 needed to end a Republican filibuster and move to a final debate on the Levin-Reed proposal, which was offered as an amendment to the annual defense authorization bill. In all, four Republicans voted with Democrats in the 52-47 vote to cut off the filibuster.
Experts disagree on whether the showy tactic of the all-night debate adopted by Senate Democratic leader Harry Reid of Nevada was a worthwhile political strategy. But they acknowledged that the Democrats in Congress won't drop their effort to force a troop withdrawal -- particularly in September, when the U.S. commander in Iraq, Gen. David Petraeus, is scheduled to report on the war's progress.
"I think it is effective," Julian Zelizer, congressional historian at Princeton University, said of the Senate's session. "It was a setup against these targeted Republicans to publicly push them to see what they will do and what they won't.
"I don't think legislating was the goal. It was to talk about Iraq," he added.
But Dan Schnur, a veteran Republican strategist in California, said the Democrats succeeded only in showing the public their own shortcomings.
"I'm always one for a good media stunt. The problem here is that there are only two things most voters know about the Democratic Congress. They're against the war, and they don't get anything done. All the overnight session did was reinforce both of those images," Schnur said.
The new Democratic Congress has faced steadily declining approval ratings from an American public frustrated with Bush, with a protracted war in Iraq and with a Congress that can't translate most of its goals into finished legislation.
The latest Reuters/Zogby poll, which GOP leaders in the Capitol trumpeted Wednesday, showed that 83 percent of those who participated in the telephone poll said Congress was doing a fair or poor job. Only 14 percent rated its performance as excellent or good. In a poll last October, just before Republicans lost control, Congress had ratings of excellent or good from 23 percent of voters surveyed.
But Democratic leaders in the House and Senate still feel good about their electoral prospects next year, a feeling that's bolstered by a big lead over Republicans in fund raising, success in recruiting top-tier candidates and knowledge that if the war drags on, it could drag down GOP candidates.
In the Senate, Democratic optimism also is based on the numbers: Of the 34 seats on the ballot next year, 22 are held by Republicans and 12 by Democrats.
Among the other targets for the Democrats are veteran GOP Sens. Pete Domenici of New Mexico and Gordon Smith of Oregon (who publicly opposes Bush on the war and voted for cloture) and an open seat in Colorado being vacated by the retiring Sen. Wayne Allard, a Republican.
If the popular Sen. John Warner, R-Va., who so far has raised almost no money for a re-election race, decides to retire, his seat also would be vigorously contested by the Democrats.
Domenici is among several Republican senators who in recent weeks have called for a change in U.S. policy, including a drawdown of combat troops in Iraq, but haven't backed legislation to mandate withdrawal.
Among the dozen Democrats up for re-election next year, the Republicans' top hopes are the seat of Sen. Tim Johnson of South Dakota, who has yet to return to the Senate after months spent recovering from a brain hemorrhage, and Sen. Mary Landrieu of Louisiana.
(E-mail Edward Epstein at eepstein(at)sfchronicle.com.)
