Democrats

Washington -- As the Senate began a new debate on the war in Iraq yesterday, the White House brushed off calls from a growing chorus of Republican lawmakers to change course in the more than four-year-old conflict. "The president wants to withdraw troops based on the facts on the ground, not on the matter of politics," White House press secretary Tony Snow told reporters. "There is no intensifying discussion about reducing troops." Snow also tried to minimize the differences between President Bush and his GOP critics on Capitol Hill by explaining that the president also wants to bring home the troops.

It seems increasingly likely that Florida's 2008 Democratic presidential primary will mean absolutely nothing, causing shorter-than-usual lines at the polls. The Democratic National Committee hasn't budged from its threat to strip the state of its 210 convention delegates as punishment for advancing the date of the vote to Jan. 29. At first, the dispute looked like a fiendishly clever ploy to make the party leadership appear self-destructive and incompetent, thereby lulling Republicans into a sense of complacency.

WASHINGTON -- The drubbing that House Republican leaders took on health care this week offered fresh evidence of just how hard it is to control Congress with a razor-thin majority.In the House and Senate, a determined Democratic minority has often been able to attract enough Republican defectors to seize control of the agenda -- and appear to make Congress dance to a Democratic tune.The Democrats have forced action on gun control and campaign finance reform, besides the bill regulating managed health care plans.

GIVE ME YOUR tired, your poor, your huddled masses yearning to cry `racism' at the drop of a hat." That's not the inscription inscribed on the Statue of Liberty. But it should be.So they came Monday morning. My people, the black people, to once again charge this newspaper with being "racist" in its coverage. The claim this time is that we are running negative articles about black mayoral candidates and only positive ones about the leading white mayoral candidate, 3rd District Democratic Councilman Martin O'Malley.

WHEN Bill Clinton took office as president, congressional Democrats resisted Mr. Clinton's efforts to steer them in the centrist direction he promised in his 1992 campaign. Mr. Clinton was too deferential, and he compounded his problems by his own miscalculations on issues such as health care. The resulting chaos undermined the president's first two years -- and precipitated the GOP landslide of 1994.California Gov. Gray Davis is too polite -- or politic -- to say he's worried that his Democratic allies could drag him into the same ditch.

TUESDAY'S primary election was an extraordinary day for three members of Bethel African Methodist Episcopal Church: Sheila Dixon won the Democratic nomination for City Council president, Joan M. Pratt was effectively re-elected as city comptroller and Catherine E. Pugh rallied to a 4th District council victory.In a city where political talent is in short supply, these three are up-and-comers to watch.They are ambitious, and they have the support of a powerful pastor, who also backed Martin O'Malley.

WASHINGTON -- On the Saturday morning after the New Hampshire primary of 1984, all the major newspapers in Maine carried the same picture on the front page. It showed former Vice President Walter F. Mondale posing on the front steps of the statehouse in Augusta with Gov. Joseph Brennan and almost all of the Democrats in the state legislature.Mr. Mondale had just lost the New Hampshire primary to Gary Hart in an upset and he needed to win the Maine caucuses to help him remain viable. The picture looked like one of those old photos of the Politburo lining up at the Kremlin, but there was no mistaking the message that party leaders were endorsing Mr. Mondale.

WASHINGTON -- Too torn by partisanship to agree on a grand plan for concluding President Clinton's impeachment trial, the Senate is trying to inch toward the goal of a mid-February finale one step at a time.In the wake of the almost strictly party-line votes they had hoped to avoid, Senate leaders were working last night on a proposal for deposing witnesses over the weekend that would conclude with a vote Tuesday on whether to call any witnesses to testify in person to the Senate.Feuding continued over such issues as whether depositions would be videotaped and what role the White House would play during that process.

WASHINGTON -- For weeks, the feverish guessing game had focused on whether a swing group of as many as a half-dozen Republican senators might buck their colleagues and side with Democrats in trying to end or truncate the impeachment trial against President Clinton.But when it came time for those pivotal votes yesterday, only one politician broke party ranks, and that maverick turned out to be a Democrat, Sen. Russell D. Feingold of Wisconsin.Like all of his Republican colleagues but none of his fellow Democrats, Feingold, one of the Senate's most earnest and independent thinkers, opposed a motion to dismiss charges against Clinton and supported a motion to take depositions from three witnesses.

WASHINGTON -- In politics, the first rule is what goes around comes around. So the operative question in the wake of the impeachment trial is how much the Republicans will suffer for their mistake in trying to drive President Clinton from office."

A week from today, New Jersey and Virginia - two nearby states that have a lot in common with Maryland, notably well-educated and racially diverse Eastern Seaboard populations with high household incomes - conduct the only two governor's races in this odd, and odd-numbered, election year. Will the results have any meaning for politics in the rest of the country? Maybe, but not likely. Despite the temptation to view these elections as bellwethers for the 2010 congressional races or even the 2012 presidential contest, they will be anything but. In 2001, only two months after the Sept.

WASHINGTON -- The last time Congress took a break, Rep. John P. Sarbanes held a series of town hall gatherings at local libraries and a volunteer firehouse with his Baltimore-area constituents. This week, he conducted conference calls instead. Sarbanes said the "virtual" meetings allow him to reach thousands as he spends his August recess trying to convince constituents of the merits of Democratic health care ideas, compared with a few hundred who might show up at a school or community center.

The Maryland Republican Party remains in upheaval after party leaders voted to express "no confidence" in James Pelura, the beleaguered chairman who has ignored calls for his resignation. Republicans are mulling the ramifications of the vote that took place at a meeting of the party's executive committee over the weekend, including whether a separate vote to call a special convention to oust Pelura is needed. Two-thirds of the committee, made up of 30 statewide and county officers, sided against the chairman.

WASHINGTON -Pennsylvania Sen. Arlen Specter, one of the few moderate Republicans left in Congress, announced Tuesday that he was switching parties, a major gain for Democrats in their quest for a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate to propel President Barack Obama's ambitious agenda. Specter's decision was also another log on the bonfire that is eating away at the GOP as a national political force. He has been one of only a handful of Republicans able to win elections while rejecting the strict anti-abortion, anti-spending, pro-gun-rights conservatism that now dominates the party.

Howard County Republicans are fired up, believing that those feisty tax-day tea parties promoted across the nation by conservatives and Fox News could lead to a political comeback locally and in Maryland. Protesters from the county gathered at rainy Meadowbrook Park in Ellicott City on April 15 and formed a caravan to the big Annapolis rally. The nationwide events boosted political interest and activity in the GOP, leading to a late surge in attendance at the local party's annual Lincoln Day dinner, featuring former Gov. Robert L. Ehrlich Jr. and his wife, Kendel, as speakers.

WASHINGTON -Sprinting to get ahead of the public backlash against bonuses paid to American Insurance Group employees, members of Congress vowed yesterday to pass legislation taxing nearly all of the money unless the employees return it. In a rare display of bipartisanship, Democrats and Republicans denounced the insurance giant for paying retention bonuses to employees who created and sold the risky financial derivatives that prompted a government bailout....

The Maryland General Assembly session that opens today is sure to be dominated by a budgetary morass, but Democrats say they sense an opportunity to demonstrate their party's mettle. At a Democratic Party luncheon in Annapolis yesterday, an annual affair on the eve of the 90-day session, party leaders from Washington and the State House vowed to fulfill promises of change made by President-elect Barack Obama. While some made overtures to Republicans, others reveled in Election Day gains over an opposition party that is near its nadir in Maryland.

WASHINGTON - House Democratic Leader Steny H. Hoyer said yesterday that Congress could come back next month to deal with an auto industry bailout, even as he conceded that action this week looks unlikely. At a question-and-answer session with reporters at the National Press Club, the second-ranking member of the House called a December session of Congress a possibility. "The year has not ended," said the Southern Maryland Democrat, who was formally re-elected yesterday to his leadership post.

On the electoral map, Maryland just got bluer and Gov. Martin O'Malley's future got brighter. Riding the wave of excitement over Barack Obama's historic presidential bid and voter discontent over the economy, the Democratic Party enlisted more than 225,000 new voters for this election and claimed victories that extended its powerful base. O'Malley wagered political capital on a slot-machine referendum and won after his Republican predecessor, Robert L. Ehrlich Jr., failed to get a slots plan through the Democrat-controlled legislature.

Republicans and Democrats in Howard County each held their annual party dinners last week, and they were a study in contrasts in this presidential election year. The GOP Lincoln Day Dinner at Turf Valley on May 18 drew about 160 people, who saw the featured speaker, former gubernatorial candidate and 16-year House of Delegates member Ellen R. Sauerbrey, give a nonpolitical presentation. Until her appointment expired in January, Sauerbrey had spent the past two years as assistant secretary of state for population, refugees and migration.