What planet is David Broder from?

Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama have abandoned their cautious advocacy of a phased withdrawal of U.S. forces and now are defending votes to cut off support for troops fighting insurgents in Iraq.

They are able to escape the charge of abandoning U.S. combat troops only because they knew when they voted that their Republican colleagues in Congress, joined by a few Democrats, would keep the funds flowing at least for a few more months. But if Clinton or Obama is nominated, that vote is certain to loom large in the general election campaign.

If President Bush was comfortable enough to veto the first war funding bill (due to what he perceived to be inadequacies of the legislation) without fear of jeopardizing the troops, then Clinton and Obama should feel just as comfortable voting against a war funding bill they disprove of for the same reasons. It’s not that the two relied on the generosity of their Republican colleagues to pass a bill they needed to vote against for political expediency—Clinton and Obama hoped this bill wouldn’t pass, such that another supplemental, one with clear benchmarks tied to an extended withdrawal, could be voted on and sent to the President.

That’s the way war funding legislation works, David. Unfunded troops, abandoned by legislators and forced to wage thrifty battle in the desserts of Anbar, was never an option and has never been an option, not during Bush’s veto nor during Clinton and Obama’s votes against the benchmark-free bill.