What do the people think of Iraq? According to the latest New York Times poll they’re interested in ponies — withdrawal is much more popular than “stay the course” but much less popular than some unspecified new strategy. At the same time, a “substantial majority of Americans expect Democrats to reduce or end American military involvement in Iraq if they win control of Congress next Tuesday and say Republicans will maintain or increase troop levels to try to win the war if they hold on to power on Capitol Hill” while the generic ballots show a clear lead for Democrats. This indicates to me that much as I find the Biden-Gelb Plan for Iraq a bit confused, it makes sense as something for Democrats to push since it puts a “new strategy” face on what amounts to a new strategy of withdrawing.
In the national data, Republicans are now so unpopular that Democrats are preferred by essentially every demographic sub-group except self-described Republicans and self-described conservatives. Of course, the election won’t be determined by national polls, but that’s a sense of the country’s mood, and indicates that if, as expected, Democrats take the House, I don’t think they need to shy away from taking an aggressive approach. People are pretty tired of this shit.