Ever since it was released back in March, Darcy Burner's "Responsible Plan to End the War in Iraq" has been gen- erating an impressive amount of national press coverage—especially for an exit strategy put together by a Democratic congressional challenger from the suburbs of Seattle whose power to help end the war is still largely hypothetical.

In the past three months, discussion of the Burner plan has turned up in the pages of the Washington Post, The Nation, and The New Republic, and on MSNBC and the popular liberal blog Huffington Post, among other places. Not bad for a politician who was derided by opponents as a lightweight when she last tried to take the 8th District's congressional seat from Republican Dave Reichert in 2006.

The plan itself is certainly impressive, but the media attention is coming largely because of the movement Burner's 35-page document has ignited among Democratic congressional contenders. So far, more than 55 Democrats running for Congress around the country have signed on to her plan and wrapped it into their campaign platforms.

Burner, who is trying again this year to unseat Reichert, told me recently that she developed the idea after becoming frustrated with the lack of good answers to a simple question: How do we end the war in Iraq?

"When it became clear to me that there wasn't going to be an answer forthcoming from Washington, D.C., I decided that I needed to do everything I could to create an answer," Burner said.

She got in touch with retired army major general Paul Eaton, who served in Iraq and now lives here in Washington State, and he agreed to work with her—"much to my surprise and delight," Burner said. Over coffees and breakfasts at Denny's, the two hashed out their answer to the question of how to end the war, and to the corollary question: "How do we prevent a repeat of the mistakes we've made?"

Drawn directly from unpassed legislation and unheeded recommendations, their proposals include: drawing down U.S. troop levels in Iraq, refocusing on diplomacy and international alliances, reasserting the authority of Congress to control war funding, restoring habeas corpus for U.S. war prisoners, punishing war profiteering and civilian contractor abuses, and weaning the U.S. off of Middle East oil.

"We tried to build on the groundwork that had already been done," Burner told me. "The big problem that we have had is that we've never had anybody look at this in terms of an answer to voters."

Now Burner has an answer for voters and, perhaps more significantly, a strong comeback to the inevitable questions about what she's done in the last two years to firm up her bona fides for serving in Congress. It's more than likely that Republicans will once again play the experience card against Burner, a former Microsoft manager who had a relatively short political résumé when she decided to challenge Reichert in 2006. She came very close to beating him anyway, but this time, with the "Responsible Plan" in hand, it seems likely that the experience debate will play differently for Burner.

Imagine the campaign trail question: "Ms. Burner, what have you done since your 2006 defeat to prepare yourself further for serving in Congress?"

You don't have to be a highly paid political consultant to imagine the new answer: "I've been hard at work, with General Eaton, on a plan that will end the war in Iraq in a responsible manner, bring our troops home, and prevent this type of terrible strategic mistake from ever happening again—which is more than I can say for my opponent, who has spent his last two years defending Bush's Iraq error and preventing solutions to a terrible problem that has cost far too many American lives."

Smart politics. But here are the more difficult questions for Burner to answer: With Democrats already controlling both the House and Senate, why haven't the ideas in her plan already been turned into legislation? What does that say about her party and her feelings about Democrats in D.C.? And why should voters expect a different result in Congress two years after they installed a new Democratic majority precisely because of their frustration with the Iraq issue?

Pinning her hopes on a Democratic president and an expanded Democratic majority in Congress that includes her, Burner replied: "Everything changes in January 2009."