This Is How The Democrats Win In November

From Political Wire:

Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) holds a four-point lead over Tom Kean Jr. (R) in New Jersey's race for U.S. Senate, 42% to 38%, "and a growing percentage of voters are associating Kean with President Bush," according to the latest Rutgers-Eagleton Poll.

Says pollster Murray Edelman: "The increasing association of Kean with Bush and a low Bush approval rating could be a fatal combination for Kean.”

Bush is a huge liability for the Republicans, and this year's Democratic congressional candidates must associate their GOP opponents with Bush at every opportunity, particularly when it comes to the GOP's continuing support for the Iraq Debacle.

And speaking of the Iraq Catastrophe, I found this particularly interesting:

Senate Democrats reacted angrily yesterday to a report that the U.S. commander in Iraq had privately presented a plan for significant troop reductions in the same week they came under attack by Republicans for trying to set a timetable for withdrawal.

Sen. Barbara Boxer (D-Calif.) said that the plan attributed to Gen. George W. Casey resembles the thinking of many Democrats who voted for a nonbinding resolution to begin a troop drawdown in December. That resolution was defeated Thursday on a largely party-line vote in the Senate.

"That means the only people who have fought us and fought us against the timetable, the only ones still saying there shouldn't be a timetable really are the Republicans in the United States Senate and in the Congress," Boxer said on CBS's "Face the Nation." "Now it turns out we're in sync with General Casey."

Sen. Carl M. Levin (Mich.), one of the two sponsors of the nonbinding resolution, which offered no pace or completion date for a withdrawal, said the report is another sign of what he termed one of the "worst-kept secrets in town" -- that the administration intends to pull out troops before the midterm elections in November.

I think Levin is right. Last November, I predicted that election-year politics would force the Bush Regime to start making significant troop withdrawals from Iraq by the Spring of 2006. Although my prediction with regard to a timetable was a bit off, I still believe that Bush will be compelled to make some troop withdrawals before the November Mid-Term elections.

That's why I really liked the Democrats' recent presentation of their drawdown resolution. It was the Democrats' best political maneuver since last November, when Senator Reid invoked Rule 21 and forced the Senate into secret session on the issue of BushCo's Iraq Intel Manipulation.