Democrats: Old Habits Die Hard

[UPDATED below]

This is starting to get boring--too many posts or items beginning with "as expected." Nonetheless, as expected, the House tried to override the Prez's veto of the Democrats' war funding bill (now with timetables for withdrawal!) and came up short. There'd been some hope that a few Republicans would peel away from the Prez to stand on their own and address the views of their constituents, but only two did so, Wayne Gilchrest of Maryland and Walter B. Jones of North Carolina. On the other hand, seven Dems voted to uphold Bush's position: John Barrow and Jim Marshall of Georgia, Gene Taylor of Mississippi, Michael McNulty of New York, Dan Boren of Oklahoma, Lincoln Davis of Tennessee, and Jim Matheson of Utah. If the Dems aren't going to stay together on issues with popular support, how are they supposed to expect Republicans to jump ship to replace them?

Further indicating that the Republican impulse to stand with the Prez was the right move for them to make, the first thing Dems offered in their negotiations with Bush to craft a funding bill that they can pass and he can sign was to take their timetables right off the table. I'm not sure that they could've held on to that point throughout serious negotiations, but they don't have to dump it immediately as if they're anteing up to even sit at the table. Senator Russ Feingold warned against this very tactic earlier today at The Huffington Post.

The ink on the President's veto is barely dry, and already, a lot of Washington insiders - including some Democrats -- are saying Congress should just give in to the President. Never mind how hard people have pushed to bring Congress to this point, when we are finally standing up to the President's disastrous Iraq policy -- they want to give up on the binding language in the bill requiring the President to begin redeploying troops from Iraq.

But that's just letting the President have his way all over again. That's the kind of thinking that got us into this war in the first place, and it's not going to cut it anymore.

On Wednesday, Dan Froomkin asked, "Can Bush Negotiate?" At this rate, he doesn't have to.

It's this kind of news that makes the whole situation quite wearing. I'm getting burned out by this "two steps forward, three steps back." It's becoming so that every news story from the Middle East is reminding me of this article from The Onion: "Middle East Conflict Intensifies As Blah Blah Blah, Etc. Etc." At the moment, that sounds about right.

UPDATE--This is distressing. According to Greg Sargent at The Horse's Mouth, aides to Pelosi and Reed have told him that the Washington Post story I referred to is false and that the Democrats have not taken a timeline for withdrawel from Iraq off the table. When Sargent checked with one of the authors of the piece, although he claimed to stand by his story, the details didn't quite add up. As quoted by Sargent, Jonathan Weisman's sources told him that the Democrats would in the future have to take the timetables out of the bill if Bush was to sign it. Unfortunately, in the story itself, it says that Dems have already taken the timelines out from consideration.