MICHAEL BARONE: We’re way past 2006:

Things are not working out as Democratic congressional leaders expected. For the first eight months of this year they struggled to find some way to shut down the American military effort in Iraq.

They took it for granted that we were stuck in a quagmire in Iraq, with continuous high casualties and very little to show for them. They pressed hard to get the Republican votes they needed to block a filibuster in the Senate and were cheered when some Republicans, like John Warner, seemed to lean their way. They worked hard over the August recess to pressure Republican House members to break ranks and vote with them. . . .

The Democrats here suffered from a lack of imagination. They could not imagine that the United States military could perform more effectively in 2007 than it did in 2005 and 2006.

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