To continue its resurgence in 2008 and beyond, the party of Franklin Roosevelt not only must distinguish itself from the current version of the party of Herbert Hoover, it also must distinguish the new fare Democrats are prepared to offer the country from that which they offered it in the not-so-distant past. To hold onto recent Congressional gains and retake the Presidency, Democratic candidates must be able to say to voters those now familiar words, "Please listen carefully as our menu has changed." And Democrats must offer this new fare simultaneously to their traditional base and to the pragmatists who comprise the reemerging center of American politics.

No issue demands new fare from Democrats more than Iraq. It brings into sharpest contrast what the Party has been and what it must become. If the way Iraq played out in the 2006 midterms proved anything, it was that, when necessary, voters can tell the difference between political calculation and personal conviction. Nineties-style triangulation meets its match in the Iraq debate. Voters want candidates who come straight at them with reality-based positions and solutions. Democrats must demonstrate they get this. Iraq provides the most obvious platform for doing so.

Voters understand intuitively that, in 2003, it was political calculation that drove nearly every Democrat who ever harbored presidential ambitions to pretend to favor going to war with Iraq. When it became clear their support for the war would dim their presidential chances, the same Democrats chose a second, equally inauthentic tack, pretending President Bush had duped them into favoring war. Not only hasn't all this make-believe made believers of the voting public as a whole, it has underscored how dramatically out of step these "pretenders" are with their own Democratic base.

The "Zero Tolerance Democrats"

A core of Democratic voters, larger than any pundits have recognized or any pollsters have quantified, already have eliminated from consideration any presidential candidate who voted to authorize the Iraq war. Maybe for the first time, a significant portion of Democratic voters will choose - or, more accurately, disqualify - presidential candidates based on a single Congressional vote. Call them the "zero tolerance Democrats."

Opposed to the war from the start, their attitude toward the pretenders is punitive and practical: why would the Democratic Party tolerate or desire another nominee bedeviled by an unforgivable political sin, combining betrayal of principle with failure of nerve, compounded by carefully calculated acts of feckless reaffirmation? To the zero tolerance Democrats, the only thing worse than a Democratic nominee who originally voted to authorize the war and later voted to fund it "before [he] voted against" funding it would be one who originally voted to authorize the war and thereafter invariably voted to fund it. (Anyone who underestimates the effect such errant voting will have on Democratic voters' moods in 2008 probably also couldn't understand how Cubs fans felt seeing one of their own, a certain Senator from New York, pretending to be a Yankees fan.)

There's something else to remember about the zero tolerance Democrats: as conditions in Iraq worsen, their numbers will swell and the intensity of their resentment toward the pretenders will grow.

The "Resigned Pragmatists"

Beyond the zero tolerance Democrats lies another, larger bloc of 2008 voters whose pragmatic attitudes toward the Iraq war also will place them well in front of most presidential candidates. Call them the "resigned pragmatists." While the zero tolerance Democrats may decide the next Democratic presidential nominee, the resigned pragmatists almost certainly will decide the next President.

This group consists of a majority of the Democratic and Independent voters who supported the Iraq invasion and a majority who opposed it. For a time, these formerly contraposed factions coalesced around an idea that seemed reasonable and went like this: "No matter how we got there, we're there now and can't afford to leave."

But now, like the zero tolerance Democrats, the resigned pragmatists recognize what candidates still driven by political calculation cannot admit - that continuing to subject American troops to death or serious injury in Iraq, and to spend $8 billion per month for the privilege, cannot be justified by the results we are achieving there. With the Iraqi civil war at least a year old, the resigned pragmatists are incredulous that our troops still are in harm's way. Paying all due respect to our troops, they recognize that American blood is not uniquely suited to being spilled in the streets and sands of Iraq. Faced with growing costs, human and material, and diminishing returns, the resigned pragmatists will join the zero tolerance Democrats in demanding nothing less than withdrawal from Iraq.

There is a subtle difference, however, in the resigned pragmatists' approach to this withdrawal: they would prefer it be accompanied by tangible proof that our four-year efforts there have not been in vain. Though they are resigned to our troops leaving Iraq, they are not resigned to our troops leaving in disgrace, like the last helicopter lifting off the rooftop of our Saigon embassy. Though they understand we must leave, they maintain a sliver of optimism that all will not be lost in Iraq after we leave. Having witnessed so many acts of political calculation surrounding Iraq the past four years, these pragmatists recognize President Bush's "surge" as the proverbial pimple on the elephant's behind. If, on the other hand, a real surge - say, to 500,000 troops - could somehow stabilize Iraq, many resigned pragmatists could be talked into spending the "withdrawal dividend" to outsource the whole damn war. (It's shocking the GOP didn't think of it first in these terms.) Surely somewhere in Dubai, someone's already run the numbers and figured out how to make it work with $8 billion a month. Why not call this ersatz force the "Donald Rumsfeld Brigade"? After all, with $8 billion to spend every month, you ought to be able to go to war with the army you want, not the army you have.

Paul De Marco (demarcoworld@yahoo.com) is an attorney from Cincinnati, Ohio.

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