When you voted for your Republican-lite Democrat candidate a couple of weeks ago, you were really voting for a bunch of political dinosaurs with museum-quality political views.

Case in point: Charlie Rangel.

Rep. Charles B. Rangel (D-N.Y.) has long advocated returning to the draft, but his efforts drew little attention during the 12 years that House Democrats were in the minority. Starting in January, however, he will chair the tax-writing Ways and Means Committee. Yesterday he said "you bet your life" he will renew his drive for a draft.

"I will be introducing that bill as soon as we start the new session," Rangel said on CBS's "Face the Nation." He portrayed the draft, suspended since 1973, as a means of spreading military obligations more equitably and prompting political leaders to think twice before starting wars.

"There's no question in my mind that this president and this administration would never have invaded Iraq, especially on the flimsy evidence that was presented to the Congress, if indeed we had a draft and members of Congress and the administration thought that their kids from their communities would be placed in harm's way," said Rangel, a Korean War veteran. "If we're going to challenge Iran and challenge North Korea and then, as some people have asked, to send more troops to Iraq, we can't do that without a draft."

Rangel has drawn modest support for his draft proposal in recent years and it has been unclear whether its prospects might improve in the 110th Congress.

Rangel got no support for his proposal back in 2004 (2 votes for, and Rangel didn't even vote for it...), and demonstrating that Democrats clearly understood the political implications of the draft, John Kerry took to ominously predicting that George W. Bush had plans in the works to reinstitute it. So what is going on now?

There is always the temptation to believe that Charlie Rangel is an idiot, but Harry Reid?

Harry M. Reid (D-Nev.), who will be the Senate majority leader, agrees that the U.S. military is stretched too thin and that "the burden of meeting the nation's security has not been shared equally by all segments of our society," said Reid spokesman Jim Manley. But Reid "believes that these problems are best addressed by making needed adjustments in the all-volunteer force," Manley said.

Its still early in the game, but here are somethings to consider.

When Reid points out that the burdens are not shared equally, he's absolutely right. The military is overwhelming recruited from red states. Not many Yankees in the military. The effect is that a major U.S. institution is overwhelmingly dominated by young, male Republicans and conservative Democrats. As the media has noted, the military is dead-set against retreat in Iraq. How do you transform a military who wants to fight into one that doesn't want to? Right--draft a whole whack of liberal slackers to balance out the patriots from Texas and Florida.

McCain continues to sound like a broken record on the issue of more troops, ignoring the very good reasons why the generals reject that idea. Its possible that the Democrats are simply cutting Senator McCain off at the pass by making the point that more troops implies a draft

As usual, the Democrats are exploiting public ignorance to the maximum extent. Rangel should know, and probably does, that the U.S. military is simply incompatible with the draft. The draft is an outmoded artifact of a theory of war that accepts the idea of human-beings as cannon-fodder. All the casualties in Iraq don't come close to what we experience in one major battle of the second world war--saw Iwo Jima, where 26,000 soldiers were either killed or wounded.

The modern military requires a highly-trained, highly-disciplined soldier capable of working in teams to accomplish military objectives using very high-tech equipment. The reality is that the military rejects all sorts of recruits because they don't meet physical and intellectual standards--and these are motivated volunteers.

Both Rangel and Reid want to create the inference that the military is made up of the poor and the black--the same lie Democrats told during the Vietnam war. The facts are that the modern military pretty much mirrors the ethnic composition of the country, and whites are over-represented in front-line positions. Several recent studies bear this out.

In summary, we found that, on average, 1999 recruits were more highly educated than the equiv­alent general population, more rural and less urban in origin, and of similar income status. We did not find evidence of minority racial exploitation (by race or by race-weighted ZIP code areas). We did find evidence of a "Southern military tradition" in that some states, notably in the South and West, provide a much higher proportion of enlisted troops by population.

Discussing the draft is a big risk, and big risks are taken in the face of big danger. I believe that danger--at least for the Democrats, is how they handle the war in Iraq. I believe you just saw the first glimmers of a butt-covering operation.

Just as big though, is the risk of blowing the first impression. Right now, the media is constructing a "frame" for the newly-empowered Democrats. The narrative the media is developing at this moment will characterize the Democrats for the next two years and perhaps beyond.

Its not going well.

Pelosi has been tripping over her own feet right out of the gate, and other senior Democrats are following her down, Keystone Kops fashion. The media has a lot of goodwill for the Democrats, after all they are uniformly liberal and far-left, but they don't like being embarrassed and right now, its all pretty embarrassing.

...and its only been two weeks.

UPDATE: Joe Gandelman demonstrates that its the Democrats that hate this thing worse than anyone.

From the standpoint of Rangel and the image of his party, this is shoot-yourself-in-the-foot politics. It (rightfully or wrongfully) smacks of precisely the kind of power-trip-run-amok that Republican doomsayers were saying would occur if the Democrats got into power and return to control key committees. Democrats: just watch your poll numbers if you shove this baby through Congress (it is unlikely to happen).

Read the whole thing.

Eric Stepp, TPM Cafe:

Second, I hate the idea of reverse-psychology being used on a military level. I'm sure millions of American families don't want their kids being used as pawns for a game of chicken between Democrats and Republicans.

Man oh man... This... Ok. I need time to process this one.

How are the Republicans involved? This is completely a Democrat sideshow--conservatives are simply content to watch.

UPDATE: Pelosi and Hoyer nix Rangel's draft plans...for next year.