Washington State Highway 169 runs southward from the bottom of Lake Washington toward Mt. Rainier, passing through an increasingly rural string of towns—Covington, Maple Valley, Black Diamond—before dead-ending in Enumclaw, amid horse pastures and small housing developments. This mostly two-lane highway exists almost entirely in Washington's 8th Congressional District, a closely-watched, Democratic-trending swing district that's home to freshman Republican Congressman Dave Reichert, and a place where Democrats think they have a good chance of picking up one of the 15 seats they need to take back the House of Representatives this November.

The further south into the district one drives along Highway 169, the more American flags there are—in yards, on cars, painted on a mailbox—and for a person wondering why Democrats, even in this blue state, are having such difficulty finding the right words to wrap around the issue of Iraq this election season, a trip down this highway provides an answer.

Just beyond the end of Highway 169, past the King County line but still in the 8th District, is the town of Buckley, population 4,500. This former mining and logging community sits in northern Pierce County, in the foothills of Mt. Rainier, perhaps an hour's drive from Bellevue and other liberal centers of the 8th, but a much greater distance from them ideologically and culturally. The area around Buckley voted strongly for Reichert in his 2004 open-seat race against the liberal radio-talk-show host Dave Ross, and if Reichert's current Democratic challenger, former military brat and Microsoft executive Darcy Burner, is going to win this November, she'll have to peel away far more swing voters down here than Ross did.

Drive into Buckley on any Sunday, past the sign bearing the town motto ("Below the snow, above the fog"), past the grounds for the Buckley Log Show, past the National Guard armory, and look for the Buttered Biscuit. Go in and ask the women who run the restaurant (lonely Democrats all) to come up with the worst thing the liberals who so badly want to win this district could say about the Iraq war, and Sandy Troy, the cook, will tell you immediately: "That they don't support it."

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It's not that people in Buckley don't have serious concerns about the American venture in Iraq. Like most people, they're wondering how the U.S. is going to extricate itself from such a costly mess, and they feel that a lot of mistakes were made in getting to this point. But if the question is framed simply (and given that this is an election year, it will be) as a question of whether they are for or against the war, people here are reflexively for whatever the U.S. military is doing. "If there was an antiwar protest here, they would run 'em out of town," says Tami Haskins, the Buttered Biscuit's owner.

Much has been made of the Democrats' lack of a coherent national message on Iraq, but the attitudes in Buckley suggest that in fact, a party made up of individual candidates with different takes on the war might actually be more likely to win. The upcoming midterm election is, after all, not a national referendum like a presidential race, but rather a collection of local decisions about who will best represent various districts of the country. And in Buckley, the quick-pullout plans of Senator John Kerry (D-Massachusetts) and Representative John Murtha (D-Pennsylvania) don't play well, even though some polling has shown a majority of troops in Iraq supporting a pullout within a year. Despite protestations to the contrary by Kerry and Murtha, their plans can easily be read by voters here (or distorted by conservative intermediaries, if you like) as defeatist and unsupportive of the troops.

"We couldn't just pull out, because why would we be there in the first place?" asks Troy, the cook, echoing Republican-promoted circular logic. On the other hand, the national Democratic Party's vague official message on Iraq—that this should be a "year of transition"—actually synchs up quite nicely with what people here are feeling: a fatigue with the entire project, but a desire not to view it as an utter failure.

So when Dwight Pelz, the chair of the state Democratic Party, recently complained to national party chairman Howard Dean that the Democrats' mild message on Iraq is "not working," he clearly didn't have the town of Buckley in mind—even though its residents could help decide the hottest Congressional race in this state. Instead, Pelz had in mind the antiwar activists in urban centers like Seattle, the kind of people who have been making life miserable for Senator Maria Cantwell. These hard-left activists, who demand an immediate pullout from Iraq and nothing less, have heckled Cantwell over her 2002 vote in favor of the Iraq invasion and recently occupied her Seattle offices.

Why did Pelz ignore the people in Buckley in favor of these activists?

"What I was saying," Pelz told me recently, "is that the position of the party is not attractive to activists. We're having a hard time recruiting them."

Not surprisingly, Blair Butterworth, a Democratic consultant who is advising Burner in her race against Reichert, doesn't share Pelz's analysis of the problem. "His job is to whip up the base and get them going, and that's fine," Butterworth says, speaking of Pelz. "But the most important thing, I think, in the southern part of the 8th District, is 'home with honor'... I know the antiwar part of the Democratic Party, and I know that many of them intellectually understand that, but I don't know if they viscerally understand the depth of emotion of these working-class families."

This is, essentially, the Democrats' rhetorical quagmire on Iraq. What the activist left demands to hear from the national Democratic leadership is not what swing voters in places like the 8th District want to hear from Democratic candidates—and the party needs both the activists and the swing voters if it's going to take back Congress.

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When Darcy Burner talks about the Iraq war, she tends to make it personal. Her father was in the Air Force. As a young woman, Burner thought of becoming a pilot and joined the Civil Air Patrol. Her brother went further, joining the 101st Airborne. He's already served one tour of duty in Iraq and could be called back for another.

"This war is not an abstraction for me," Burner says.

Unlike Cantwell, she doesn't have the burden of a past vote in favor of the war hanging over her, and that frees her up to present a more nuanced take. Burner says she would not have voted for the war, knowing what she knows now, and that she believes the Bush administration "misled" the nation into the conflict. (Cantwell, meanwhile, has refused to disavow her vote, making her the only Democratic member of this state's Congressional delegation who voted for the war and has not subsequently called the vote a mistake.) When talking about Iraq, Burner next pivots to praise of the troops, who "have done everything we have asked them to do," and then joins the "year of transition" chorus, calling for "clear benchmarks in the key areas of security, governance, reconstruction, and internationalization" so that American soldiers can be brought home "as soon as possible."

It's not a 10-point plan. It's not the fiery call for immediate withdrawal that liberal activists would like to hear. It's not what Kerry and Murtha are saying. But it does play well in Buckley, and it's helped Burner's race become a "toss up," according to a nonpartisan D.C. analysis released recently. (It also helped Burner get selected last week for the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee's "Red to Blue" program, which funnels big-dollar donations and strategic assistance into competitive races around the country.)

Undoubtedly, many Democrats still won't be satisfied with Burner's language on the war, but perhaps what matters most, in terms of this election, is where their highest desire lies. If they want to take back Congress more than they want to push an uncompromising demand for an instant pullout, hers may be the kind of rhetoric they'll have to get behind. recommended