Get in line, Cindy Sheehan: An election is at stake

Did no one in the Democratic Party give Cindy Sheehan the message? Sheehan was arrested in Washington this week after not leaving the offices of Democratic congressional leaders, who have neglected to impeach George Bush over Iraq. As punishment, Sheehan says, she plans to run against Speaker Nancy Pelosi in the next election.

The message Democrats meant to give Sheehan is this: “Last year, you and the rest of the anti-war crowd said you cared more about getting the United States out of Iraq and impeaching the president than about which party was in charge. (Good one!) As expected, the candidates you ran against us then highlighted our moderate position between you and Republicans. So, hey, thanks for the effort. Truly.

“Sure, our candidates may have made a pledge or two about all the change that would happen once we were the majority. But now that we’re in charge Iraq looks more complicated, so when we said we heard your demand ‘Out of Iraq now,’ we’re pretty sure what you meant by ‘now’ was ‘2008,’ which works well for us politically. We know you’ll understand.”

Thank goodness Maine anti-war groups were on the right e-mail list to receive word from the Democrats. They once had themselves arrested in the offices of Democratic Rep. Tom Allen and Republican Sen. Susan Collins with equal vigor. In his congressional race last year, Allen had an angry and articulate anti-war opponent in Dexter Kamilewicz, who pounded on the fact that Allen, who opposed war authorization, had voted repeatedly in favor of funding for the war. But that was when Allen was sure to win his House race and before he decided to run against Collins.

War may be life and death, but picking up a Democratic Senate seat really matters, so Allen’s latest votes favoring a pull-out date are good enough. Whichever way Collins votes, naturally, will be wrong.

Explaining exactly how her vote is wrong is sometimes difficult, as when she recently sided with the Democrats and three other Republicans to support ending debate on the Senate’s version of an Iraq pull-out amendment. She was up front about why she voted as she did: She said she also wanted a vote on her own related bill she wrote with Sen. Ben Nelson, D-Neb., but Democratic Leader Harry Reid warned he wouldn’t bring up other amendments unless he got 60 votes to end debate on the pull-out bill. He didn’t, and he kept his word.

Collins’ vote didn’t count in her favor, according to her opponents, because it wasn’t cast with sincerity – she would not have supported the Democrats’ bill, as if they couldn’t have passed it with 59 votes after getting her help on the cloture vote.

The new script from the Democrats for the Left is to assert Collins says one thing at home and votes another way in Congress. This strategy assumes Collins cannot be unhappy with the way the war has gone without also supporting whatever the Democrats want.

Collins has given the president the benefit of the doubt more than she should have, but she has been consistent in her comments and voting, her thinking evolving, like Allen’s, as the war has proved less and less solvable. She opposes the surge and backs a version of the Iraq Study Group report that would end the U.S. combat mission and leave troops to train Iraqis and protect the borders.

This position is also said not to count because it merely recommends an end date rather than requires one, though members of Congress who think that requiring something of the Bush administration means it will happen are kidding themselves. The study-group bill’s strongest selling point is that, unlike the pull-out bill, it could pass the Senate and start making a difference, if Democratic leaders would allow it to come up for a vote. They won’t do that because that would make it harder for them to blame Republicans for the war.

Sheehan and the many others arrested this week seem fed up with this level of politics, and still shocked that the war continues six months after Democrats took charge.

Perhaps if they didn’t know this was going to happen someone should also fill them in on their impeachment hope – forget it. Impeachment proceedings would make Democrats look shrill and obstructionist. That would hurt their image, and, priorities being what they are, Democrats can’t allow that.

Todd Benoit is the editorial page editor of the Bangor Daily News. Readers may contact him at tbenoit@bangordailynews.net.