Dems Planning Next Failure

Sen. Harry Reid, he of the 19% approval rating, is previewing the Dems next failure:

Anti-war Senate Democrats Tuesday plotted a new showdown with US President George W. Bush over Iraq, but admitted they had erred by making supporters think they could end the war.

"On Iraq, we're going to hold the president's feet to the fire," said Senate Majority leader Harry Reid, saying debate would start in two weeks time.

Less than a month after bowing to Bush's demands and approving a 100 billion dollar war budget, Democratic leaders pledged a new challenge to the White House on withdrawal timelines, troop readiness and curtailing the president's authority to continue the fight.

Reid said however that Democrats, saddled with a thin majority in Congress, had raised unrealistic expectations about their ability to end the war, among supporters who powered their takeover of Congress last year.

"We set the bar too high," he said, noting that under Senate rules, Democrats needed 60 votes in the 100 seat chamber to thwart Republican blocking tactics. ...

Reid said, after meeting senior Senators who are driving his party's Iraq policy, that he would also call for debate aimed at redefining the 2002 Senate authorization for Bush to wage war in Iraq.

He said freshman Senator Jim Webb would frame an attempt to prevent Pentagon chiefs cutting downtime between deployments for US troops to Iraq -- a move which has also been resisted by the administration.

"We may go with something very simple that says: 'a soldier cannot go back to Iraq until he's home for the length of time he's been there.'"

Reid's a former boxer, and he should know that this is what's known as "telegraphing your punch". Boxers who "telegraph their punches" often end up face down on the canvas while the referee counts them out.

No matter how they attempt to disguise their efforts, they're not going to attract the support they need by making it impossible for our troops to complete the mission. Politically, it's suicide, but if they want to try it, we'll all get to see them fail once again.

In a related piece, George Will takes on the bumbling Sen. Reid.