Matt Stoller is predicting the beginning of an intra-party Democratic civil war. The Progressive Caucus, long the most passive of the caucusses - but also the largest, is stirring from its slumber and has decided that enough is enough. As Raw Story reports:

Consensus-seeking negotiations on a measure that would limit President Bush's troop escalation in Iraq have angered Congressional Progressives. RAW STORY has learned that they are readying a response that will call for a more rapid withdrawal of US troops from America's four year-long war.

A Democratic aide close to the Congressional Progressive Caucus told RAW STORY that some Democrats will push for withdrawal when the next bill on Iraq War funding comes to the House floor.

"There is a plan for a whip operation, to get votes for an amendment that will say that any money spent will go toward a fully funded withdrawal," the aide explained. "We can't support the idea of having a $150 billion Supplemental [Defense Appropriations bill] that gives $100 billion for the escalation."

The result of this - the fracture between those who are too scared of being called troop haters, or weak on defense, or who love money from business PACs, even though large corporations have given far more to Republicans than Democrats, and any self-respecting party (that wouldn't be the Democratic party, obviously) would remember both their friends and their enemies - will likely be near paralysis for the next two years and then a series of vicious primary challenges against the worst offenders. Democrats were elected to do two things - end corruption, and cripple George Bush's warmaking abilities. But some Democrats, lead in the House by Hoyer and Emmanuel; and in the Senate by Reid and Schumer; don't have the balls. They'd rather that American soldiers and Iraqi civilians continue to die, than risk a confrontation with Republicans or the chance that the right's dead enders - military fetishists; eliminations and racists, might craft a stab-in-the-back storyline.

Sadly for them, no matter what they do, the people they seem to feel some desperate need to pander to will always hate them and think they're traitors who should be strung up from the nearest lamp post. That's why they're on the far right, because they like hating, because they fetishize the military and they have a complete inability to accept responsibility for the failures of those they identify with.

But then Progressives who are disappointed in Reid were fools. I was warning two years ago that Reid wasn't a liberal, wasn't a progressive and wasn't on the side of either of them. He wasn't there on Alito, or Roberts; he didn't bother to whip the torture bill - he just doesn't care that much about the things that those on the left care about. Why should he? He may be a Democrat but he's a conservative democrat. A good man in many ways - but he's got no problem getting in bed with Fox, he's pro-life, and so on. He's a conservative.

As for Schumer, he's a good policy wonk. He loves the middle class. He's good on gay rights. But he's awful on foreign affairs, he thinks the war will end on its own before 2008, and he's not willing to fight to make it end sooner. The lives of soldiers aren't particularly real to him, even less are the lives of Iraqis real to him. He wants to win, and he thinks fighting the war is a mug's game. He's like a lot Dem activists in one sense - he thinks domestic issues are more important, and all he wants to do is look after his people domestically, and his people are, essentially, the Reagan Democrats who crossed the line to the Republican party and sometimes cross back. He's got his eye on them, and they are what's most important to him. Certainly not some dirty hippies, progressives, or metropolitan types.

In the House, the new members have been wined and dined by corporate lobbyists and by Rahm and Hoyer. They can set them up with big donors and help retire those debts they have. They tell them that to win, they have to raise a million dollars a year. They feed them talking points and they give them polls that are carefully selected to show that being liberal is a bad idea; that it's not a winning strategy. They become their new, best, friends. And all they ask is that the new members, elected on anti-war platforms; or as progressive champions, in many cases - forget the ones who got them to Washington. Just turn away from the messy sorts of people who care so much, and are noisy and demanding and come into our circuit of parties and dinners and business suited lobbyists who always have the studies to support their positions; always have the talking points to sell them; and who have pre-written bills all ready for you, so you don't have to do the work yourself, or think too much about policy issues that, honestly, you don't know much about.

So it may seem that all the firepower is on the other side. But that's only half true. Something interesting has started to happen - Pelosi, for example, is more popular than her party. Why is that? Because she's more liberal than them and she seems to actually want to end the war - just like she was elected to. There's a lot of pressure out there. People say "but you lost on Lamont" and that's true, but it's only half true - in most states a candidate defeated like Lieberman was wouldn't be able to run the way Lieberman did. The primary threat is real

And so is the disgust. Democrats were elected to fight the war. Those who do, will be rewarded, both by the general public and by the base, because they will have fulfilled the trust that was placed in them. Those who haven't, will not be trusted by either the population or the base. And as a politician, once the locals start thinking you're a liar, you're toast.

The progressive caucus deciding to fight is the key moment and it is the key moment because it will force other Democrats to make public votes for the war. It will make clear who's really onboard; who can be trusted; and who can't. And when they make clear votes to keep the war going, they will become vulnerable. The war is polling under 20%. It's not popular. They will become ripe for primary challenges, or even electoral defeat in the general if an anti-war Republican steps up.

There's an old saying - power can't be given, it can only be taken. Progressives need to learn the truth of that saying. It's time to take power. If progressives don't, for whatever reason, it won't be given. And Washington will remain in the hands of men and women who don't care about anything but a smooth easy life with pre-written bills, fat checks and an easy conscience untroubled by the screams of dying soldiers or innocent civilians.