John Nichols: Harry Reid Finally Starts to Fight Smart

[babylonsister]

http://www.thenation.com/blogs/thebeat?pid=214732

Harry Reid Finally Starts to Fight Smart

Harry Reid is finally coming to the realization reached months ago by the American people: That Democrats in Congress have been played for suckers by the Bush White House and its Republican allies on Capitol Hill.

The Senate Majority Leader's recognition of the realities of Washington in the Bush era--as evidenced by his decision Monday to set up a scenario that could clarify the role played by Republican senators in maintaining the president's exceptionally unpopular approach to the Iraq War--holds out the prospect that the politics of the debate over ending the occupation could change radically in the weeks to come.

Make no mistake, such a shift is necessary.

Despite the clear mandate they received last November--a mandate that, in a time of war and against a fierce campaign by the sitting President, restored the opposition party to control of both the US House and Senate for the first time since the "Republican revolution" of 1994--Congressional Democrats have for the past six months behaved as powerless bystanders in George Bush's Washington.

Instead of boldly challenging the most dysfunctional president in American history, using all the tools of the system of a checks and balances that was established to favor legislative oversight of the executive branch, Democrats have played the game by Bush's rules. And they have lost at every turn.

With a quarter of the term of the current Congress now done, it is clear that the cooperative approach adopted by House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-California, and Senate Majority Leader Reid, D-Nevada, hasn't worked. It is not just that approval ratings for Congress are now below those of a failed president that Democrats were elected to challenge and constrain. It is that the disastrous war in Iraq, the central crisis of this American moment, continues to claim the lives of US troops and Iraqi civilians at an alarming rate.

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[ORDagnabbit]

1. fricken sad it took them since the presidency was stolen in 2000 to realize this.