The Lamont victory indicates that the road to the Democratic presidential nomination runs straight through the party’s anti-war base. John Kerry and John Edwards long ago abandoned their hawkish positions on Iraq. Others, like Hillary, hedged. But since Lieberman’s defeat, the New York senator has embraced Lamont probably much more than she wanted to. And yesterday, former Virginia Gov. Mark Warner came out of his shell on Iraq a little bit more than he has in the past. He’s inched closer to the standard Democratic talking points on the war:

My sense is we've got to make clear that we're getting out of Iraq. We've got to start a redeployment of our troops.

When should they get out? He doesn’t say. Where should our troops redeploy? He doesn’t say. How will the combination of both achieve victory in Iraq or, at least, stave off defeat? He doesn’t say. As to what led to the current conditions in Iraq, Warner does offer an answer:

Again, we're seeing the price of the Bush administration's arrogance that they can remake Iraq in America's image without engaging Iraq's neighbors.

But Warner won’t answer how he’d have voted on the Iraq War resolution had he’d been in Congress at the time. Is he too arrogant to give voters an explanation? Also, I don’t remember Warner voicing opposition each time millions of Iraqis went to the polls. And what nations should we have engaged? Syria? Iran? What goodies should we have offered to these dictatorships? Perhaps the governor will fill us all in the next time he’s in Iowa or New Hampshire.