A Gallup Poll released last week offered a disturbing glimpse about the state of play: just 14 percent of independents approve of the job Congress is doing, the lowest figure all year. In just the past few days alone, surveys have shown Democratic incumbents trailing Republicans among independent voters by double-digit margins in competitive statewide contests in places as varied as Connecticut, Ohio and Iowa.
Obama’s own popularity among independents has fallen significantly, too. A CBS News poll Tuesday showed the president’s approval rating among unaligned voters falling to 45 percent — down from 63 percent in April.
The marks are finally catching on to the game. But this was the part I found most interesting:
Michael Dimock, a pollster for the Pew Research Center — which reported in a new survey that only 45 percent of independents want their own representative to return to Congress — also believes Democrats have suffered for their inability to move the ball on key agenda items such as health care.
Emphasis mine. Usually, people say they hate Congress, but think their own representative isn’t like the rest of the bums to be thrown out. When they say they want to replace even their own, there’s a revolution in the making, and it won’t be a happy one for the majority party. And as for the nonsense that Demos are “suffering for their inability to move the ball on key agenda items such as healthcare,” no. They are suffering because they’re overreaching on those items. But I hope they continue to believe this fantasy. It will make the blowback all the greater a year from now.
[Afternoon update]
When reality catches up with rhetoric:
We are left with two conclusions. 1) A very inexperienced president has discovered that all the easy, Manichean campaign rhetoric of 2008 does not translate well into actual governance. 2) Obama is in a race to push a rather radical, polarizing agenda down the throat of a center-right country before the country wakes up and his approval ratings hit 40 percent.
We may see one of two things happen: Either the country will move more to the left in four years than it has in the last 50; or Obama will take down with him both the Democratic Congress and the very notion of responsible liberal governance, thereby achieving a Jimmy Carter–type legacy.
My money’s on number two.
You think opinions are bad now. People are still receiving pay from unemployment funds. It has been renewed several times but when they stop renewing it and the full impact of the coming commercial property disaster hits along with the continued drop in the value of all of the billions of dollars that Obama’s paymaster has printed.
Then you will really see what people will say and think. And in some states where they are bankrupt and can’t even pay their government workers, you will see more than talk and it won’t be pretty. When liberals have no money and their money machine from the nanny state dries up, it wll be chaos multiplied.
Most conservatives and right wing Americans have more than one skill and have the ability to do various kinds of work or at least survive. Liberals usually don’t even have can goods or a can opener and can’t/won’t work at a minimum wage job.
Without government help and with all the extra taxes and other burdens that Obama is coming down on America with, the liberals will be the worse off and the hardest hit.
Then we will see how they act and what they say and do.
Papa Ray
Central Texas
Voter disenchantment isn’t totally focused on this administration and Congress–the GOP-controlled Congress and the Bush administration did plenty to upset people, too–but the scale of the overreaching today, coupled with the fact that little that was labeled “bad” under Bush has changed. . .well, there’s going to be some major changes in 2010. It’s unlikely that the Democrats will retain control of either house.
It’s instructive to compare today’s situation with that in 1993-94. Then, Clinton–a far more politically astute player at the time than Obama is today–tried with some success to co-opt the revolution by moving rightward on a number of issues. Obama appears to be doing nothing to moderate his or the Democratic Congress’ power grabs, which is beginning to wake up a number of citizens across the political spectrum.
I have a feeling the old American default of distrusting the government and wanting to limit at least some of its powers may see some resurgence soon.
Never underestimate the power of ideologues to explain things in self-serving ways.
I predict we will see more and more of the following line of argument:
YES, the Independents are unhappy with the Dems. That’s b/c they haven’t done enough.
Instead of playing around with opt-out clauses, there should have been a straightforward installment of single-payer, government-run health care.
Instead of negotiating with Big Oil and Big Energy, there should have been a “New Deal” style jobs program focused on renewable energy.
Instead of leaving Wall Street in charge of banks, the banks should have been nationalized.
Etc., etc.
For the Left, the problem is never that they over-reached. It’s that they didn’t reach enough.