Why did Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi surrender to Bush on the Iraq War Supplemental? Not because they wanted to - both Reid and Pelosi are passionately opposed to the war. Unfortunately, there are simply not enough Democrats and Republicans in Congress who are willing to join them in standing up to Bush.

What are the numbers? We know them exactly because the Senate and the House just voted on setting a deadline for bringing U.S. troops home from Iraq.

• In the Senate, the Feingold-Reid Amendment was defeated 67-29, with all Republicans voting no along with 20 "Bush Democrats," while 29 progressive Democrats voted yes.
• In the House, the McGovern Amendment was defeated 255-171, with all but two Republicans voting no along with 59 "Bush Democrats," while 169 progressive Democrats voted yes.

More importantly, what can we do to change those numbers? How can we get pro-war Democrats and Republicans to change and vote against the war?

We thought we sent Congress a loud-and-clear message in 2006 when we swept pro-war Republicans out and swept anti-war Democrats in. Unfortunately a majority in Congress didn't get the message, so we have to do it again in 2008.

And the time to start is now. Every pro-war member of Congress knows (s)he will face an angry anti-war majority of voters next November, but the sooner they feel the heat, the greater the odds they will see the light and change their position.

If we start now, we can recruit outstanding candidates and organize ourselves to support those candidates. We can put bumper stickers on our cars, signs on our lawns, spread the word to our neighbors and friends, and help raise the money our candidates need to run effective campaigns.

Of course all of us at Democrats.com will work to defeat pro-war Republicans. But this time we will also have to challenge pro-war "Bush Democrats." That means we have to recruit aggressive progressive Democrats to challenge these "Bush Democrats" in primaries.

And we can test our strength right away because there are two special elections this summer, both in solid Democratic seats: CA-37, following the death of Juanita Millender MacDonald (June 26), and  MA-05, following the retirement of Marty Meehan (Sept. 24).

If you want to help us sweep anti-war Republicans and Democrats out of Congress, we have a simple request: sign our Iraq Vote Pledge and forward it to a couple of friends. Our strength is measured by our numbers, so it would be tremendous to get 100,000 voters to sign our pledge.

In the coming days, we will put more "meat" on the bones of our strategy - so sign up now and we'll keep you posted!