MANCHESTER, N.H. ? Anti-war and anti-Bush fervor is growing among rank-and-file Democrats, threatening to pull the party to the left and creating a rift between increasingly belligerent activists and the party’s leaders in Washington.

Many outside-the-Beltway Democrats want the party to turn forcefully against the war in Iraq and to investigate, censure or even impeach President Bush should the party win control of Congress this fall.

Yet party leaders such as Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton of New York have maintained support for the war while criticizing the way Bush has handled it and have shied from talk of using power to go to after him.

The fault line is evident as Democrats gather for spring and summer sessions filled with demands for bolder action by the congressional wing of their party, especially if they win control of the House or Senate in November.

In New Hampshire – the state that will kick off the party’s 2008 presidential primary voting – activists gave thunderous ovations this weekend to Sen. Russ Feingold, D-Wis., when he pressed his anti-war agenda, boasted that he alone among potential 2008 presidential candidates opposed the war from the start and pushed for a censure of Bush.

And nationally, one poll shows that more than eight out of 10 Democrats now believe the United States should have stayed out of Iraq. The same poll for CBS News this spring showed that more than three out of five Democrats want U.S. troops out of Iraq as soon as possible, even if the country is not stable.

In one sign of the shifting sentiment, Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass, a possible repeat candidate for president, told supporters in an e-mail last week that “most members of Congress, myself included, share some responsibility for getting us into Iraq.”

And those who did vote against it now brag about it.

“I never bought into it,” Feingold said to applause from more than 600 activists at New Hampshire’s state Democratic convention Saturday. “I didn’t just write an op-ed (article) about it. I voted against it.”

“His message resonates with people,” said Lou D’Allesandro, a state senator from Manchester who said presidential candidates who voted to authorize the war “are going to have to recognize that in retrospect it was the wrong thing to do. It’s no crime to say you made a mistake.”

But admitting a crucial mistake, not to mention coming out in direct opposition to the war, could scare politicians who fear that opposing even an unpopular war could be seen as being anti-military.

“Some of our elected officials feel somewhat leery of looking being weak on national security issues because Republicans have been successful in the past painting Democrats as weak on national security,” said New Hampshire Democratic Party chairwoman Kathy Sullivan. “That’s where the tension comes from.”