President Feingold

Ben has Feingold's statement on Bush's speech this morning.

More exciting, though, is the reaction to Russ on MSNBC this morning. Jeffrey Feldman has a good write-up (waring--lots of comments, slow loading):

I just listened to a statement from John Kerry in response to the President's speech, and then an interview with Russ Feingold. [. . .] Russ Feingold has just become the new leader of the Democratic Party. [. . .]

Kerry was confusing, he was overly patrician. He was unclear. After listening to him speak for five minutes, it was not clear what his ideas were.

Feingold was the exact opposite. [. . .] Feingold made several points that were crystal clear.

First, he said that the President's strategy should not be "Victory in Iraq," but "Victory Against Al Qaeda." [. . .] Second, he said that just because the President made the mistake of confusing the war in Iraq with the fight against Al Qaeda, doesn't mean that we should make that mistake over and over again. We must refocus the war on the real enemy: Al Qaeda.

There's lots more.

Face it: Russ Feingold is talking about what our national security priorities should be. No one else in the Democratic party has been so consistently and so eloquently right about the war. The underlying problem is not so much that Bush misled (in more ways than one); it's that Bush's priorities have been screwed up since the beginning.

Russ is not cut-and-run wimp, as the right wing has so inelegantly tried to label him. (When in Doubt, the right-wing motto seems to be, Accuse a Democrat of Treason.) He just wants to be sure that when we do send our troops into battle, we do so against the right enemy, with the right planning, and with a clear mission and definition of victory.

Hillary ain't got that.