With the 2006 midterm elections fast approaching and antiwar sentiment continuing to grow, this fall is shaping up as a moment of truth for antiwar Democrats in Washington. There has always been an antiwar wing of the party--flexing at least a measure of muscle in the fall of 2002, when 126 Democrats in the House and twenty-one in the Senate opposed authorizing Bush to use military force against Iraq. For the most part, however, antiwar voices have been drowned out by party leaders who've either parroted Bush's rhetoric or avoided the issue altogether, hoping in vain that the electorate's focus could be shifted to economic issues at home. But after a summer recess during which the news from Iraq was more nightmarish than ever, Democratic foes of the war are raising the volume, particularly about the once unmentionable idea of withdrawing troops.

The Out of Iraq Caucus, founded in the House earlier this year by California Representative Maxine Waters, now has more than sixty members. Many of those members are also active in a re-energized Congressional Progressive Caucus, led by two of the House's most vocal antiwar Democrats, California Representatives Barbara Lee and Lynn Woolsey. In May Woolsey sponsored an amendment to a Defense Authorization measure demanding that the Administration define its goals in Iraq and provide some sort of exit strategy. Woolsey's amendment received a surprising 128 votes. She has since organized a hearing, set for September 15, on disengaging from Iraq. "Everything about this war has been a ruinous debacle: the way we got into it, the way we've conducted it, the refusal of a plan for disengagement, the high price--in dollars and lives--we've paid for it," Woolsey argued in announcing the session. "There is only one solution: Bring the troops home."

Woolsey's hearing will be the first in a number of moves this fall to focus the vague Congressional discussion on concrete questions of goals, timelines and--for the Bush Administration--accountability. Representative John Conyers of Michigan, the ranking Democrat on the House judiciary committee, will use hearings, procedural moves and bipartisan resolutions to draw attention to the Downing Street memo--notes from a 2002 meeting between US and British intelligence officials in which a top British official observed that "the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy" of invading Iraq. A House resolution demanding that the White House disclose documents relating to issues raised by the memo now has almost seventy co-sponsors, including Iowa Republican Jim Leach.

On the other side of the Capitol, where Democratic senators have been even more cautious than their House colleagues, Feingold broke the biggest taboo in the debate over withdrawing troops in August when he proposed an actual date for ending the US presence in Iraq: December 31, 2006. Such talk remains anathema to prospective 2008 presidential candidates like Clinton, Biden and Senator Evan Bayh of Indiana. Clinton has been particularly aggressive in distancing herself from calls by other Democrats for withdrawal, pushing the Administration-friendly line that, in her words, "we don't want to send a signal to the insurgents, to the terrorists, that we are going to be out of here at some date certain" --and handing right-wing pundits ammunition for their "even Hillary Clinton says this is dangerous" attacks on antiwar Democrats.

But Clinton is increasingly positioning herself on the wrong side of the debate--not just with grassroots Democrats but with the country as a whole. "Everywhere you look, the signals tell us that it's the perfect time for Democratic leaders to be saying, Enough is enough," says former Senator Gary Hart of Colorado. "But I don't see that happening until the critics of the war develop their message and make it heard within the party."

The antiwar message is finally taking shape. Feingold's call for an explicit timeline for bringing home the troops is an essential component. But that call, Hart notes, cannot come in a void; it must be part of a broader vision for keeping Americans safe and secure in a turbulent world. "You start by casting an exit strategy from Iraq as part of a national security agenda," Hart argues. "But then you must put forward that agenda, and it has to encompass getting homeland security right, modernizing the military, diplomacy, international aid. It's the big picture."

As the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina made clear, that agenda must include a domestic policy component. "Democrats can't be afraid to say, Look, this war is emptying the Treasury of the money that should be paying for education, healthcare, housing and the rebuilding of our cities," argues former California legislator Tom Hayden, who cut his political teeth in the anti-Vietnam movement of the 1960s and is now an outspoken advocate for making an antiwar message central to the Democratic platform in 2006 and 2008.

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