It's all about-face for the Democrats

THE SUMMER'S POLLS show that one-third of Americans favor an immediate withdrawal from Iraq and nearly two-thirds support withdrawal within the next year. In the face of such numbers, the conventional wisdom predicts disaster at the polls for Republicans in the 2006 midterm elections. As conservative insider Grover Norquist put it recently: "If Iraq is in the rearview mirror in the '06 elections, the Republicans will do fine. But if it's still in the windshield, there are problems."

Is this good news for Democrats? Maybe, but a growing disconnect between the party's establishment hawks and an increasingly antiwar base could foretell an even bigger crackup on the Democratic than the Republican side. So far, none of the best known faces of the Democratic Party -- Hillary Clinton, say, or Joe Biden, or John Kerry, all of whom supported the war -- have joined those clamoring for an end to the fighting. In fact, the foreign policy establishment of the Democratic Party is lined up with President Bush in favor of "staying the course."

Needless to say, an internecine war between its hawks and doves is the last thing the beleaguered Democratic Party needs. You can be sure that Karl Rove would do his best to hammer such a wedge straight through the heart of the party come election time. So both Democratic factions would be well-advised to do some serious thinking before their disagreements get out of hand.

For their part, members of the antiwar left have an easy role: They should continue to push establishment Democrats to support withdrawal from Iraq, but they should also make it clear that no one will be punished for doing so, regardless of their past support for the war. However angry they are, doves can best serve their cause by not demanding tortured explanations and tearful apologies. A change in position should be enough.

The hawks have a much harder job. They're the ones who need to publicly change their position, an act that carries the risk of being tarred forever with the dreaded label that killed Kerry's presidential campaign: "flip-flopper." Besides, mainstream Democratic politicians and their advisors genuinely think immediate withdrawal is a bad idea that likely would plunge Iraq into a savage civil war.

And then there's this: Democrats with long memories know perfectly well that similar demands for withdrawal during the Vietnam War wrecked the party's reputation on national security issues for a generation. The American public tended to associate Democratic doubts with the nation's first-ever military defeat, and regardless of whether that conclusion was fair or not, no one is eager to repeat it.