The Politico reports that, slowly but surely, Democrats are backing away from their demands for an immediate withdrawal from Iraq. Instead they now focus on relatively non-binding benchmarks on political progress.

Each day lately, Democrats inch closer to giving President Bush more money for the war in Iraq without any serious mandates for withdrawing U.S. troops.

Democratic leaders are loath to acknowledge they’ve backed off, but lawmakers from both sides of the aisle, as well as congressional aides, say Democrats are trying to find a way to provide continued troop funding while searching for some compromises that show they’re still intent on challenging the president on the war.

The possible conditions for troop funding include anti-torture rules and benchmarks for Iraqi political reconciliation, language sure to upset an impatient Democratic anti-war base that wants immediate troop withdrawals.

According to one senior Democratic lawmaker, there’s a growing discomfort among pro-defense Democrats about linking a $50 billion Iraq measure to troop withdrawal.

“We have to come off this lack of funding for the military operations,” the lawmaker said. “We have to continue the funding. We don’t want to look like we’re against troop funding. … We should separate the funding discussion from the rest of the war.”

Ed Morrissey writes that “Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi have made themselves absurd on this issue,” while Michelle Malkin points out that “the n[e]troots will not be happy.” Jules Crittenden, meanwhile, believes, that it’s taking the Democrats a bit long to “give up on surrender,” while Susan Duclos explains that “[t]he Democratic leadership is loathe to publicly admit the change in strategy because it breaks yet more of the promises that they have been making consistently, and breaking just as consistently, to the anti-war base of their party, but they are not left with much choice.”

And me? I think that the Democrats were foolish to run on a ‘withdrawal now!’ platform in 06. They couldn’t live up to it and they should’ve known they couldn’t (which I’m quite sure they knew). The anti-war base will get angry, no doubt, but they too only have themselves to blame because they too should have been grounded enough in reality to realize that the Democrats wouldn’t be able to force Bush into withdrawing the American troops from Iraq prematurely. Could Congress stop funding the war? Sure. But everyone with at least a bit understanding of politics knows that this would equal political suicide for the Democrats.