Feingold

This is good stuff. Not only is this a direct counter to Bush’s insistence that setting a timeline plays into terrorists’ hands (even while clearly trying to maneuver out of there by the ’06 mid-terms to give the GOP their best shot at retaining dominance), but it’s also a brilliant strategy to see where the rest of the 2008 competition stands. Ezra has the same two notions, and has some good inside dish, so I’ll turn it over to him (emphasis mine):

Russ Feingold is calling for a pull-out date of December 31st, 2006, and, so far as I can tell, he's going to do so loudly. Yesterday, I was invited to two major national security speeches and a media Q&A Russ is giving in Los Angeles early next week. So he's definitely taking the message nationwide and is, if I can speculate, hoping to use his "firstness" on the topic to carve out a Deanesque maverick position in advance of 2008…

It'll be interesting, as Kevin notes, to see how the Biden/Clinton wing reacts. If they're solicitous of the move and publicly supportive of the motivations behind it, you'll know that a) the polls have got to them and b) they're hedging their bets. If they condemn it and say something about not aiding the insurgency, you'll know they're a bunch of douches determined to avoid another Vietnam-style meltdown of the party's national security credentials.

For anyone who’s interested, I like Feingold a lot, although I still have practical concerns about how his personal life could create problems for him as a national candidate (even though it shouldn’t).