The Plight of the Antiwar Democrat

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For now, Altmire is in a kind of political no-man's-land. At a local event shortly after he voted for a timeline to withdraw troops from Iraq, he was confronted by a constituent who was angry that Democrats hadn't put more pressure on Bush. "He asked why he'd bothered to vote for me, since I was clearly another rubber stamp for Bush," the Congressman recalls. Not three feet away, a woman who opposed the timeline jumped into the conversation. She argued that he was just a rubber stamp for Pelosi. "The crowd laughed when they heard her say that," he says, chuckling. "What am I? A rubber stamp for Bush or Pelosi?"