Dems speak up.

• Author: Conniff, Ruth
• Position: Democrats

So much is going wrong for the Republicans--sinking poll numbers, the mess in Iraq, torture, scandal, and a bruising budget battle--that it is beginning to look like political change is coming.

Democrats are raising their voices, criticizing the Bush Administration in terms Bush's opponents have been longing to hear.

When Representative John Murtha, Democrat of Pennsylvania, held his press conference to call for the withdrawal of troops from Iraq within six months, you knew the climate had shifted. Republicans denounced Murtha, an ex-Marine and one of his party's biggest hawks, saying, in the memorable words of Representative Jean Schmidt of Ohio, "Cowards cut and run, Marines never do."

Or as Vice President Cheney put it, "The President and I cannot prevent certain politicians from losing their memory, or their backbone."

The counterattack backfired. "I like guys who got five deferments and [have] never been there and send people to war, and then don't like to hear suggestions about what needs to be done," Murtha retorted. When Republicans tried to expose Democratic hypocrisy on the issue by staging an up-or-down vote on immediate troop withdrawal, even leading anti-war Representative Dennis Kucinich voted against the measure, calling it a "trick."

Some Democrats were afraid to embrace Murtha's call to end the war. Most disappointing was Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee leader Rahm Emanuel, who told The Washington Post, "Jack Murtha went out and spoke for Jack Murtha." As for Iraq policy, Emanuel added: "At the right time, we will have a position."

Progressive politico David Sirota blasted Emanuel in his Huffington Post blog, demanding to know, "When, Rahm, is the 'right time'?" Sirota called Emanuel the embodiment of the Democratic tendency to be "connivers, prevaricators ... cowering, weak-kneed wimps ... who have no moral compass."

Some bloggers also blamed House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi for not more strongly backing Murtha right away. But other progressive Democrats were not nearly as concerned.

"I actually think Murtha by himself, to the people we have to reach, is more powerful than Murtha and Pelosi," says Democratic strategist Steve Cobble. Cobble thinks it might have been a tactical decision for Democratic leaders not to jump into the limelight with Murtha and instead to let him stand alone as "an old, hardcore veteran hawk who had finally had enough."

In any event, the Democrats are much more united than they used...