I have nothing like Michael Crowley’s sources among Democrats and I’ve done no reporting on this whatsoever. So, I’m quite open to being 100% wrong. But my first reaction to the news that Murtha intends to run for Majority Leader if the Dems take back the Congress was that it’s a shrewd calculation to rev-up the base. Murtha is the leader of the bug-out of Iraq caucus. If Murtha makes it clear that a vote for a Democratic Congress is a vote for a bug-out leadership, that might rally the Democratic shock troops and/or leftwing donors. If they took back Congress, they could claim, openly or with some nuance, that the ‘06 election was a referendum on the war. I have no doubt more human motives are at work as well — ambition, spite, etc — this is Congress after all. But that’s how I scored it at first.