House Passes Iraq Supplemental; puts Democrats at Risk

I missed on the final tally; the Democrats did get to 218. Final vote was 218-212.

As I've noted, the Senate won't pass a bill with a mandatory withdrawal date. So all this is theater. The President will apparently make a statement later today regarding this action of the House.

I would expect that he will begin to ratchet up the pressure on the Congress to pass a bill worth signing, before it starts to impact forces on the ground. That might start today.

Update: As noted earlier, some Democrats from swing districts have taken difficult votes in support of the bill. The list of supporters is a veritable 'who's who' of vulnerable Democratic freshmen. Going off the list of at-risk seats put together by Charlie Cook, they include:

• Baron Hill
• Brad Ellsworth
• Joe Donnelly (all 3 of Indiana)
• Heath Shuler (NC)
• Michael Arcuri
• Kirsten Gillibrand
• John Hall (all 3 of NY)
• Jerry McNerney (CA)
• Zack Space (OH)
• Gabrielle Giffords
• Harry Mitchell (both of AZ)
• Steve Kagen (WI)
• Patrick Murphy
• Joe Sestak
• Jason Altmire (all 3 of PA)
• Ron Klein
• Tim Mahoney (both of FL)
• Tim Walz (MN)
• Paul Hodes
• Carol Shea Porter (both NH)
• Nancy Boyda (KS)
• Ed Perlmutter (CO)
• John Yarmouth (KY)
  

That's 23 freshmen Democrats from swing districts who've had to take votes that they could suffer for in 2008. I won't for a minute say that they were voting because their arms were twisted, but I hope they were voting for conviction - because odds are that a few of them will lose their seats because of this vote. On the flip side, I can name 6 or 7 House Democrats (Lee, Kucinich, Woolsey, Waters, Stark, Watson, Lewis...) in safe seats who voted against; they could have weathered the criticism of this vote better than some of these newcomers.

By the way, only two Republicans voted in favor: Wayne Gilchrest and Walter Jones.

Update II: CNN covers it here.

Update III: Allah has the video of the President's response - very forceful, as expected. And the President again hit on the deadline - the date by which Congress has to appropriate the funds before it endangers our troops - April 15.

Update IV: Club for Growth had called upon 5 Freshman Democrats to vote against the bill, because they had campaigned so vociferously against pork-barrel spending. All 5 voted in favor.