More on MoveOn, Petraeus

A follow up to the MoveOn story, from WaPo. You want to see what kind of thinking is going on in the White House? Get a load of this:

In response to a question at a news conference yesterday, the president said that few Democrats had condemned the ad, "which leads me to come to this conclusion: that most Democrats are afraid of irritating a left-wing group like MoveOn.org, or more afraid of irritating them than they are of irritating the United States military."

Excuse me? Democrats have to worry about irritating the U.S. military? Well, maybe under a Bush administration. . . .

Go ahead -- tell me it can't happen here.

Rudy Giuliani was somewhat less specific, but just as scary.

Hillary Clinton voted against the Republican resolution. Barack Obama didn't vote.

"The focus of the United States Senate should be on ending this war, not on criticizing newspaper advertisements,'' Obama said. "This amendment was a stunt designed only to score cheap political points while what we should be doing is focusing on the deadly serious challenge we face in Iraq.''

What would John Edwards have done?

"I respect and honor General Petraeus' service, but I would have opposed the Cornyn amendment as an irresponsible waste of time -- the Senate should be working on ending the war, not dithering over newspaper ads."

As for the grassroots response, read this press release from MoveOn, quoting some of the e-mails they've received from military families and personnel.

A further note: Matthew Yglesias, who is one of those I panned at one point for repeating the "the ad was dumb" mantra, got one thing right:

As best I can tell, it's all basically bullshit. The whole fracas of Petraeus, Crocker, MoveOn, etc. has had, to a good first approximation, no impact whatsoever on anything of any significance. Bush continues to be stubborn. Republicans continue to back Bush. The war continues to go poorly and continues to be unpopular. There was nothing else that ever could have happened. A bunch of editors and politicians talked themselves into believing that this September showdown was crucially significant, but they were all wrong and their theory never made any sense.

The only showdown that mattered happened months ago. Democrats passed a war appropriation that funded the phased withdrawal of troops. Bush vetoed that appropriation and said he would only sign an appropriation that funded open-ended war. Bush sought to portray a congressional refusal to appropriate money for an open-ended military involvement in Iraq as some kind of plot to leave the troops starving and without bullets in Iraq. The press largely bought into this frame, which was re-enforced by the fact that many leading Democrats immediately decided to buy into as well. The party then decided not to try to fight to reframe the issue but, instead, to accept it. Given that framing of the question, the only thing to do was surrender and give Bush his money. And given that precedent, the only thing to do is to keep on surrendering any time Bush rhetorically holds the troops' well-being hostage to his preference for perpetual war.

That's the Democratic strategy: keep on surrendering.

Scott Lemieux nails it:

Whether MoveOn didn't take out the ad or had chosen to superimpose a picture of Benedict Arnold on Petraeus makes absolutely no difference to anything. The war would have gone on anyway. The war would remain unpopular. GOP Senators would find some other way to run out the clock at the hearings that most people don't watch because they're at work and also find some other way of claiming that opposition to their disastrous war means hating the troops. It's all a completely empty kabuki. (And to echo djw, I can't believe Reid let a vote on this get to the floor.)