WASHINGTON -- As congressional Democrats cast their votes this week on a troop funding bill without deadlines for withdrawal from Iraq, California anti-war activists and local party leaders expressed dismay and disappointment. 

“The complaint (Democrats) have been giving the last six years is they haven’t been in charge,” said Sandy Cook, a member of the California Democratic Party’s executive board for the 33rd Assembly District. “Now they are in charge.”

“Democrats,” he said, “have to stand for something.”

Cook said Democratic leaders should have sent President Bush another bill with a schedule for troop withdrawal from Iraq, as they did last month – even though it drew Bush’s veto and he renewed his pledge to reject any bill with a timeline for the war.

“In my view, Congress should play hardball with the president because people’s lives are on the line,” said anti-war activist David Krieger, president of the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation in Santa Barbara.

According to a New York Times/CBS poll released Friday, Americans view the war more negatively than ever – 76 percent of Americans said the war is going badly and 61 percent said America should not have entered Iraq. Still, a majority would continue funding the war as long as the Iraq government meets specific goals.

But Democrats, caught between an unbending president and mounting pressure from their political base and anti-war groups, said they were running out of time on a bill to fund troops by June 1. And they did not have the 67 Senate votes necessary to override a veto if they sent Bush another bill with a withdrawal timeline.

“We can’t sign timelines over (Bush’s) veto,” House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., said earlier this week.

Hoyer, who has been attacked in Baltimore-area radio ads by the liberal advocacy group MoveOn.org for his vote against an earlier measure to withdraw troops within 180 days, said Democrats had pushed the debate “substantially forward” in “demanding a new direction in Iraq.”

Americans Against Escalation in Iraq, a coalition of anti-war groups including MoveOn.org, has been working with congressional Democrats since early this year to pressure the president, and Republicans in swing districts.

But after the Democrats announced this week that they would approve the funding bill, MoveOn.org said in a statement that it would challenge congressional Democrats who “ran (for election) on ending the war but vote for more chaos and troops in Iraq” by running ads and recruiting challengers for the next primary election.

“The anti-war movement will become more militant and increase pressure on Internet blogs and on the politicians coming home for the Memorial Day holiday,” said Robert C. Smith, a political science professor at San Francisco State University.

In conceding to the president, Democrats had sought to avert the risk of Republican attacks over the Memorial Day recess for not funding the troops. Party leaders were also cautious to protect freshman Democrats elected in suburban and rural swing districts, Smith said.

The $120 billion war funding bill includes benchmarks for the Iraq government to meet in order to receive reconstruction aid, but Bush could waive them. In another concession, Democrats deleted from the bill requirements for troop readiness, training and equipment.

Prior to voting on Capitol Hill, the bill was separated into two parts – war money and domestic spending – to spare anti-war Democrats from having to vote against a bill that includes money earmarked for agriculture disaster relief, veterans’ benefits and Katrina recovery.

In final negotiations, the White House rejected a Democratic offer to delete billions of dollars in domestic spending in exchange for a war timetable.
Some party followers said earmarks should not have been in the bill.

“It’s dumb politics. There’s a time for simplicity,” said Cook, a retired Army colonel who served in Vietnam. “The Democrats are getting beaten up for a few earmarks on this bill by the same people who were attaching everything but the caboose onto bills last year.”

Jim Hensley, president of the Greater Oxnard Organization of Democrats, said understood that Democrats wanted to address many issues. But, he said, attaching earmarks onto a bill to bring troops home was wrong.

Democrats attached earmarks to build support for the bill, promising to fund projects and address issues important to lawmakers and their constituencies.

“That’s kind of a typical way of putting together a coalition, putting in those kinds of pork-barrel projects,” Smith said. “It seems to me a little unseemly, particularly since Democrats came to power as reform politicians.”

Liberal Democrats voting against the funding bill included California Sen. Barbara Boxer, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-San Francisco, and Rep. Lois Capps, D-Santa Barbara.

Capps said in a statement: “I have opposed this war from the beginning and cannot, in good conscience, vote for legislation that continues President Bush’s failed strategy and open-ended commitment.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein, in supporting it, said she was “deeply disappointed” that it did not hold Bush accountable but noted that it funded troops and critical domestic needs.

“This is not the end of the debate,” a solemn Pelosi said before voting late Thursday.

Democrats will debate the Bush administration’s war strategy again in the fiscal 2008 defense authorization bill in late June, and Pelosi promised a vote this year on whether to take away the president’s authority to wage the war.

September will be a crucial month in the debate. Coalition commander Gen. David Petraeus is scheduled to report on progress in Iraq. Moderate Republicans have said they will be listening closely to the general’s report.

Smith said that until enough Republicans change their minds, “You have government by the minority.”