Shooting too high or too low?

I'm having mixed reactions to this post by Steve Soto. In it he argues that the Democrats erred on the Iraq withdrawal proposals that were voted down today by shooting too high. He thinks we should start small and move in the right direction slowly.

Look, as long as Democrats begin every debate on Iraq this year with the words “withdrawal”, “timeline”, or even “redeployment”, the GOP has a political need to back Bush up and unleash the dogs. That is the problem with what Kerry, Feingold, and even Reid did today by framing the debate at the outset about withdrawal. Instead, I suggest that Democrats begin by starting from the outer edges of policy responses and then working their way in incrementally and gradually making it more and more deadly for Bush's supporters to stick with him. For example, what would have happened today if Kerry and Feingold had drafted a more-or-less unified Democratic resolution that only dealt with asserting that there would be no permanent bases or large-scale permanent troop presence inside Iraq? How many vulnerable Republicans this year could have voted against that amendment today without harming their reelection chances in November? Not many.

Once such a resolution could be put out there, the Democrats could come back to the issue of Iraq when Congress returns from summer recess and then put forward the next resolution, bringing the circle in closer on the GOP, which would state that there will be no American troops in Iraq on or after December 31, 2008, so that a vote against that by the GOP would not only be inconsistent with current American public opinion, but also prove to voters in advance of the midterms that the GOP only wants to dump their Iraq mess on Bush’s successor.

Working incrementally and not aiming too high is the key to Democratic success this year on Iraq.

At one level I agree. Surely, it would have been great to put it to the Thuglicans by offering a resolution to prevent permanent bases in Iraq. Think what the Dems could have done with that with the guys who voted against it!

However, the main problem with the Dems to date is that they have stood for nothing because they're so afraid of being criticized by the Thugs. To advise them not to shoot too high, given that history, worries me.