Spare a moment to take pity on Joe Lieberman. Six years ago, as Al Gore’s centrist running mate, he was on the verge of becoming the first Jewish vice-president of the United States. Last week, as he gave an important speech on the Iraq war in the Senate, not a single fellow Democrat was in the chamber to listen.

He was introduced by a Republican elder, John Warner, and subsequently praised by a far-right conservative, Rick Santorum. That’s the company Lieberman is now forced to keep. For good measure, he is fighting a brutal primary battle this August against an anti-war Democratic insurgent, Ned Lamont, in his own state of Connecticut, which he has represented for 18 years.

Things have got so bad that Lieberman hasn’t ruled out running in November as an independent if his own party rejects him. He told the Hartford Courant: “If the unexpected happens, do I want to keep open the option of taking my case as an independent Democrat to all the voters of Connecticut so that they can have the last word in November? That’s a question I haven’t decided.” Gulp.

Lieberman faces the same quandary as many of his fellow Democrats — in a more extreme form. Like many of them he voted for the Iraq war, and hoped for an easy victory. As the recklessness and incompetence of the Bush team emerged, the Democrats had several choices to make. Were they to recant their votes for the war? Could they criticise the conduct of the war while retaining overall support for it? Or should they go into full-throated opposition, call for withdrawal and risk being tagged by Karl Rove, a key adviser of President George W Bush, as cheese-eating surrender monkeys?

As so often with Democrats, they picked all three — and a few more for good measure. John Kerry’s attempt to have it a million different ways was integral to his defeat in the presidential election in 2004.

Last week, in a piece of partisan kabuki theatre, Congress voted on two non-binding resolutions, calling for a phased “redeployment” from Iraq, or a fixed timetable for an exit. Both resolutions lost badly, and the administration’s policy of staying on the current course won out. On the more moderate “phased redeployment” question, six Democrats backed the president (three of them facing re-election in November). Lieberman was one of them, but has gone much further in backing the war than his fellows. He has even argued that merely criticising Bush for his war-management is somehow inappropriate.

You can see why the left loathes him. A poll shows him with a net negative rating among Democrats. One blogger at the Daily Kos, the online left’s chief rampart, referred to Lieberman thus: “If you understand your enemy, you have a good chance at winning the war.” He wasn’t talking about Osama Bin Laden.

It is, of course, easy to beat up on the Democrats. The strategy adopted by Dick Cheney, the vice-president, and Rove is clear: ignore all the empirical reality in Iraq, hope for the best, and bash the opposition as weaklings and defeatists. Last Thursday Cheney did his usual subtle routine: “The worst possible thing we could do is what the Democrats are suggesting,” he thundered. “No matter how you carve it — you can call it anything you want — but basically, it is packing it in, going home, persuading and convincing and validating the theory that the Americans don’t have the stomach for this fight.” Translation: the opposition are wimps.

But what are Democrats supposed to do? A few opposed the war and feel vindicated by the chaos it appears to have unleashed. More, like Senator Hillary Clinton, are appalled by the mismanagement but also see the perils of a timetable for withdrawal. Others still believe Iraq is a sideshow from the real war on terror — that is, Iran, Pakistan and Al-Qaeda.

In opposition in both houses and cut out of the national security apparatus by a brutally partisan White House, they have no nominee to unite them; and only criticism to offer. But that, in their defence, is what an opposition is for. Outflanking the president on the right — charging him with not being serious enough about the war, of not sending enough troops, of sanctioning torture and losing allies — is no longer a viable option for them. That is left for disenchanted neocon intellectuals, realists like Senator Chuck Hagel, or grown-ups like Senator John McCain.

Clinton, the Democratic presidential frontrunner, has to my mind the most coherent posture. She sticks with her decision to vote for the war, places responsibility for its chaotic management where it belongs (the president), and warns against a premature exit. But for this utterly reasonable stance she found herself booed and heckled at a Democratic party event, and has seen her ratings slide behind John Edwards, Kerry’s running mate in 2004, in some polls of the Democratic base.

What she opposes — Bush’s incompetence — may, for added poignancy, make her own position less tenable if Iraq spirals into a more intense civil war than now exists. It’s an excruciating dilemma. Stuck between the rage of her base, the unease of the centre, and the baying dogs of the far right, she has trouble keeping her head above the political waters.

And so Rove wins again, for the moment. His crude strategy of covering incompetence by throwing accusations of weakness and surrender at his opponents may well be effective. Remember how he managed to turn Kerry, a Vietnam veteran, into a coward and liar about his own war record, while portraying a man who essentially ducked his duty into a symbol of military valour? He knows which levers to pull, and he isn’t ashamed to do what’s necessary.

But that, too, is a risky strategy in the long run. At some point Americans want to know exactly what the plan for victory is. They hate losing in wars but they’re not immune to empirical evidence, and they may turn with a vengeance on men who misled them into a nightmare they see no end to.

The president’s PR brilliance of the week, after the killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, will fade if the results aren’t there in the autumn. And then the wimps might seem prescient, or even courageous.

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