Senate Sleepover: Democrats Hope To Force Iraq Vote

July 18, 2007 — -- With cots laid out and pillows puffed, the Senate held its first all-night session since 2003 on Tuesday night. Into the wee hours of the morning, democrats tried to focus attention on the war in Iraq and the refusal by Republicans to support a bill that would mandate US troop withdrawal.

Frustrated by Republicans using Senate rules to prevent a direct majority vote on that amendment, offered by Democratic Sens. Carl Levin of Michigan and Jack Reed of Rhode Island, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev., held the Senate open all night.

As the moon rose over Washington, D.C., Reid invoked a series of quorum calls, requiring all Senators to come to the floor and vote present. He'd planned to do that all night but -- at the behest of Sen. Barbara Boxer, D-Calif., who expressed concern about some of the older Senators -- held off from doing so between approximately midnight and roughly 5 a.m.

In an interview with ABC News during the late-night session, Majority Whip Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, said Democratic pressure was working.

"We really feel like we're moving toward that critical mass, that number of votes we need to change the war, and this is about trying to persuade a few more Republicans to join us," he said.

Durbin acknowledged that the vote on the Levin-Reed bill Wednesday morning would likely fail but that the sleepover session, which Republicans derided as everything from political theater to a stunt, would have an effect.

"I guarantee you this," Durbin said, "those senators who have already said they are displeased with the president's policy, they are going to go home in August and face a lot of questions: 'Why didn't you vote to start bringing the troops home? If you think the policy is wrong, why didn't you vote that way?'"

In an interview with ABC News, GOP leader McConnell called the act pointless theatrics. "There's no good reason for it. This is a little bit of Hollywood on Capitol Hill. It's theatre -- and not very good theatre."

Theatre or not, the night was replete with some staging --