THE WAR....Latest poll results on the Iraq war:
- 76% believe the war is going badly.
- 63% support a timetable for withdrawal in 2008.
- 76% think the surge is either making things worse or having no impact.
- Only 15% support open-ended funding. The rest either want to cut off funds completely or make them conditional on benchmarks.
- Large pluralities trust Dems more on foreign policy (51%-31%) and on making decisions about the war (51%-33%).
Sure, politicians shouldn't blindly look to polls to decide where they stand. But when, by huge margins, polls back up the positions you already have, it means you could certainly stand to show a little more spine defending those positions. Dems have a substantial lead over Republicans on foreign policy for the first time in ages, but they could lose that lead pretty quickly by looking weak and indecisive. The American public wants to be out of Iraq by next year. Democrats ought to be the ones to insist that that happen.