A Voice Against Presidential War-Making Now Leads a Chorus

By Lois Romano
Thursday, May 10, 2007

As Democrats brace themselves for yet another showdown with President Bush over war funding, one legislator who stood alone for a long time is now finding a crowd milling around her.

Three days after the Sept. 11 attacks, Barbara Lee, a liberal Democrat from Oakland, Calif., was the lone member of Congress to vote against the resolution authorizing the president to use force in pursuing those responsible.

When she walked off the House floor, her colleagues told her she had made a mistake and should change her vote, given the emotionally charged environment at the time. She was deluged with hostile mail, and she needed security because of death threats.

"It was horrible," she recalled this week, sitting in the serene, elegant Rayburn Room of the Capitol. "A really, really bad time. But what you have to do is keep moving forward."

These days, Lee finds herself at the often-tense negotiating table as Democratic leaders, trying to end the war in Iraq, propose a new round of legislation to fund the war yet also require the administration to set benchmarks that would determine when to bring troops home.

Although Lee would vastly prefer a timeline for withdrawal -- which Bush has already vetoed -- she believes any conditions for funding are better than none.

"Again, do we give the president another blank check to continue this occupation and civil war, or do we tell him that this is the beginning of the end?" she asks.

Don't get her wrong; she says she will never vote for any measure that funds this war, including the one that could come for a vote today. But she is credited by Democrats with being able to balance principle and pragmatism.

Democrats say that she was largely responsible for breaking the stalemate between leadership and antiwar liberals on the most recent funding vote, brokering an eleventh-hour compromise that saved House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) from an embarrassing defeat. In exchange for inserting timelines for withdrawing troops, she and two other California Democrats who oppose the war, Rep. Maxine Waters and Rep. Lynn Woolsey, cleared the way for other liberals to support the bill. The trio got a standing ovation from the caucus.

"I weighed in," says Lee, adding that there's "no way" she wanted to see Pelosi suffer the defeat.

Lee, 60, is soft-spoken and is no lefty flame thrower. The daughter of a veteran of two wars (whom she still calls "Colonel"), she says she is not a pacifist. But she felt strongly in 2001, as she does now, that the president should not be given unfettered authority to wage war -- a position many more of her colleagues are embracing these days.

She calls the Democrats' demands an "excellent first step" and "a signal to the American people that Congress wants this war to end."

The City of Brotherly Politics?

If the latest polls in the Philadelphia mayor's race are accurate, House Democrats won't be losing any members from their fragile majority.

In an unusual matchup, Reps. Bob Brady and Chaka Fattah are running against each other in the May 15 primary -- along with three other Democrats.

The freewheeling contest has been marked by ample mudslinging, but these two opponents have been quite civil to each other. Aides to the men say they have a cordial relationship and have at times even issued joint news releases dealing with their adjoining Philadelphia districts. "They understand that political realities go beyond headlines," said a spokesman for Brady. "In real politics, you work together."

The most recent Keystone Poll, released yesterday, shows Fattah and Brady at 13 percent and 11 percent, respectively. That puts them in third and fourth place in the field of five, distantly trailing the leader. Twenty-one percent of Democratic voters are still undecided.

Whoever wins the Democratic primary probably will be elected mayor in November.

The Verboten Verb: 'Impeach'

Rep. John Murtha (D-Pa.), a vocal opponent of the Iraq war, was pounced on by Republicans last week when he mentioned the politically forbidden "impeachment" word. His close friend Pelosi said last year that Democrats would not consider impeaching Bush.

But if Democrats are avoiding the word, Murtha's mail might make one wonder why. Of the more than 1,500 people who have written, only a couple of dozen criticized his remarks.

Murtha said in an interview with The Washington Post that he was not calling for Bush's removal on CBS's "Face the Nation" but was merely noting impeachment among other alternatives for pressuring the president to end the war. The others? Popular opinion, elections and purse strings.

All War All the Time

As part of the Democrats' political strategy to highlight the war at every turn, the non-legislative Senate Democratic Steering Committee has developed an antiwar showcase to engage people from different professions and different locales to talk about how the war has affected their lives.

America Speaks Out on the War in Iraq (fairly direct there) will launch today on the Hill featuring Anna Burger of the Service Employees International Union and Jim Winkler, an outspoken official of the 11 million-member United Methodist Church. The effort's launch will include Sen. Ted Kennedy and Sen. Debbie Stabenow, who chairs the committee, which advocates the Democrats' agenda with outside groups.

Although there is no budget for this effort, a Senate leadership aide pointed out that given grass-roots antiwar efforts nationally, there should be no problem identifying people willing to come to Washington and speak against the war.

It's Official

Rep. Marty Meehan (D-Mass.) submitted his letter of resignation from the House yesterday effective July 1.

Meehan was recently named the new president of University of Massachusetts's Lowell campus, his alma mater. Of great interest to House Democrats is what Meehan will do with his $5 million war chest. As a matter of law, he could give it in total to the Democratic National Committee -- but most observers speculate he will convert it to a political action committee to keep his hand in the game. A spokesman said nothing has been decided yet.