The suggestion being that the party doesn’t take on Iraq because it wants to use the war as a club to beat Republicans about the head with in 2008:

The silver lining behind Democratic capitulation on Iraq, to talk like a mathematician, is that it reduces the 2008 election to a problem previously solved. 2006 showed us that we can destroy the GOP in an election where public anger about the continuing Iraq War is the big issue, and in 2008 we’ll be replaying that scenario with 7 more GOP Senators up for re-election than last time.

Notes Yglesias: “But given that Republicans aren’t doing what everyone expected them to do and reducing their political exposure on Iraq by winding the war down, Democrats are disinclined to go out on a limb to do it for them.”

This is the war as a cold political calculus on both sides of the aisle. Which seems yet another reason people gravitate to the likes of Ron Paul.