It is becoming increasingly obvious that Democrats have a stronger grasp on national security issues than do Republicans. Democratic voters, at least. That a sitting senior senator could be hoisted on his petard by an unknown challenger in an atmosphere of roughly 98 percent incumbent retention in the Senate says a lot about the unpopularity of the Iraq War, and the disgust isn't limited to Democrats. A recent CNN poll showed 61 percent of Americans want to cut and run, with just 34 percent now supporting a “stay and die” policy.*

The fact that Democrats' opinions are hardening is reflected in the results of the Lieberman/Lamont race, too. Forty-three percent of Lamont voters said the primary reason they voted for Lamont was his opposition to the Iraq War. Only six percent voted for Lieberman because of his support for it. Moreover, although 72 percent of the primary voters opposed the decision to go to war, Lieberman won 39 percent of that faction. If the election had been solely a referendum on the war, it would have been much worse for Lieberman.

All told, there is a growing body of evidence that Democratic voters have entirely repudiated anything resembling the Bush doctrine and are ready to start over. But the question is, looking toward 2008, has the Democratic administration-in-waiting learned the same lesson?

Democratic foreign policy elites, history be damned, still count among their ranks Kenneth “Threatening Storm” Pollack, who recently co-wrote a piece in The Washington Post advising America on what to think about Iraq now. Pollack would be a serious contender for a top spot in a prospective Democratic administration's foreign policy machine; it's worth picking the brains of elites like him and seeing whether they match up to those of voters.

They don't. Although cloaked in a tone of hand-wringing and sprinkled with admissions like “even a serious course correction in Washington and Baghdad may only postpone the inevitable,” Pollack and coauthor Daniel Byman advocate a Lieberman-style Iraq policy. They call for America to “devise strategies to deal with refugees, minimize terrorist attacks emanating from Iraq, dampen the anger in neighboring populations caused by the conflict, prevent secession fever, and keep Iraq's neighbors from intervening.” Whew! Then comes the admission that “the odds of success are poor, but nonetheless, we have to try.” Alongside these poor odds of success, get ready to start paying -- and paying, and paying, and paying. The Pollack-Byman strategy “requires Americans to endure significant long-term costs -- in both blood and treasure -- in Iraq.” The authors look at history and admit that, given historical experience, we could be looking at 20 years of intervention in Iraq. Twenty years.

That two Democratic heavy-hitters are cooking up such a policy should generate alarm among people who care about redirecting U.S. foreign policy. We make foreign policy with the political parties we have, and with Democrats offering proposals like this, the choices are rather frightening. Pollack and Byman's approach to the Iraq problem fails to recognize that sometimes it's better to back away from the blackjack table instead of taking out a second mortgage to double down after a losing run.

And it isn't just Pollack and Byman. The Democratic Leadership Council has a big enough tent to house Marshall Wittman, the former John McCain staffer who spends time urging Hillary Clinton to “move to the right of the Bush administration on Iran,” and wondering, in the context of that country, “When does containment become appeasement?” General Wesley Clark, another top Democratic foreign policy thinker, stated in a speech at New England College earlier this year that he opposes starting to leave Iraq until “stability” is achieved and the Sunnis and Shi'a are at peace.

The Democratic foreign policy establishment seems convinced that it can live on the incompetence dodge alone. Perhaps still chastened by post-Vietnam political stress, Democratic elites seem either to be convinced that they can't repudiate the Bush doctrine openly or else are in fundamental agreement with its logic. While it's increasingly obvious that Democratic voters are off the Bush doctrine bandwagon, a vote cast for a Dem in '08 could put into power a Democratic administration that gives you Ken Pollacks running the show.

Simply asking candidates about their views won't promise much insight as to the way they'll conduct foreign policy: recall that Bush's mantra during the 2000 campaign was foreign policy “humility.” If his presidency has demonstrated anything, it's that people installed in bureaucracies drive policy. Thus, the best way to tell what could happen in a Democratic administration might be to handicap top prospective political appointees and look at the things they've been saying. And from Pollack to Madeleine Albright to a whole host of Dem heavyweights, there is a genuine disconnect between the elites and the electorate.

The haze of World War III delirium surrounding the Bush administration and its ideological supporters is making reality-based right-wingers squirm. Independents are clearly in play for the Democrats. And Democratic voters themselves, of course, call out for meaningful change every time they get the chance. The danger is that casting a ballot for a Dem in '08 will yield a reheated, squishier version of the Bush doctrine, applied via people like Kenneth Pollack.

Justin Logan is a foreign policy analyst at the Cato Institute and a member of the Coalition for a Realistic Foreign Policy.

* This sentence has been edited from the original.

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