Freshman Class Message: Don't Back Down

The three freshman progressive senators who participated in the "kitchen table" discussion at Take Back America Monday night all said they would support a strategy of not backing down from efforts to end the war in Iraq in the face of veto threats and political retaliation from President Bush.

What Democrats ought to do in the Senate is "keep pushing those votes," said Sen. Amy Klobuchar, D-Minn., even though antiwar forces in the Senate might not have the votes to overcome a Republican filibuster.

With Democrats holding a 51-49 majority, including two independents who caucus with the Democrats, at least nine Republican votes are needed to limit debate on a measure and bring it to a vote. Klobuchar predicted that if the Senate votes repatedly on measures to end funding for the war, Republicans will gradually feel the pressure and begin supporting them. "One of these days, we will have enough votes," she said.

Rep. Bernie Sanders of Vermont, one of the two independents, agreed. "I think you've got a whole lot of nervous Republicans over there, and I think you've got to make them even more nervous," he said.

Sen. Sherrod Brown, D-Ohio, likewise argued for a sustained push on antiwar legislative measures. He said the Republican Party operates like a top-down-managed corporation. "They have trouble breaking off from their CEO, and that is why we've got to push and push and push," he said.

None of the three, however, made it clar whether Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, R-Nev., would pursue that strategy. While harsh in his rhetoric against the war and more willing to support tough antiwar measures than many of his Senate colleagues, Reid has sometimes shied away from extended stare-downs with Senate Republicans and the White House that would threaten the possibility of getting other Senate business done.

The three also strongly disagreed with a questioner who asked why the Democratic majority was, as he put it, neglecting their duty by not launching impeachment proceedings aginst President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney.

Sanders said the one person who would want the Democrats to focus on impeachment more than anyone else would be White House political advisor Karl Rove, who would twist the impeachment proceedings into an effort to cast the Democrats as extremists squandering the mandate they received from the voters to get legislation moved through the Congress. The time is better spent, Sanders said, in exposing the wrongdoing of the administration and addressing the problems created by its policies.

Brown agreed that impeachment proceedings would be a distraction from sorely needed work, including ending the war in Iraq. "The country deserves to have these problems solved, and this is where our energy needs to be," he said.

The senators--half of the gang of six that put the Senate into Democratic hands in 2006--came off as smart, thoughtful and independent thinkers, a striking contast to a conservative movement that is dispirited, intellectually brankrupt and morally adrift.