A big new poll is out from USAToday/Gallup on Iraq. Some of the results are fas­ci­nat­ing. Asked which of these options they most pre­ferred: “With­draw all troops from Iraq imme­di­ate­ly. With­draw all troops by Sep­tem­ber 2007, that is, in 12 months’ time. With­draw troops, but take as many years to do this as are need­ed to turn con­trol over to the Iraqis. OR, Send more troops to Iraq,” 48% pre­ferred to leave with­in the next year (17% imme­di­ate­ly, 31% in a year), while only 9% backed the admin­is­tra­tions plan to send in more and more troops.

For the last 9 months, about 2/3 of the pub­lic thinks George Bush does not have a clear plan for han­dling the sit­u­a­tion in Iraq (a sit­u­a­tion that 75% think is a civ­il war). Unfor­tu­nate­ly, only a quar­ter of the pub­lic thinks Democ­rats have a plan. Over half think Con­gress is not doing enough over­sight of Iraq policy.

And here’s the thing: over the last year or so, the major push that Con­gres­sion­al and grass­roots Democ­rats have been mak­ing is that a Demo­c­ra­t­ic Con­gress would step up over­sight on Iraq and push for a with­draw­al as soon as is prac­ti­cal. Some are look­ing for hard dead­lines, oth­ers seem to pre­fer some­thing clos­er to guide­lines, but that troop lev­els should start decreas­ing fair­ly soon is a con­sen­sus. The sta­tus quo isn’t accept­able, and with­out seri­ous over­sight, it won’t be pos­si­ble to know how soon it’ll be pos­si­ble to start draw­ing down troop levels.

Con­gres­sion­al Democ­rats are just a bit gun­shy about stand­ing up for that mes­sage. I don’t know why, but I know that whin­ing about not hav­ing a mes­sage isn’t what they should be doing. In oth­er words, what Mike said.