What Democratic Congress?

A Greenwald post I read yesterday referenced this Gallop poll addressing Presidential and Congressional approval ratings. The poll showed a 3% uptick in presidential approval when compared to August, while Congress doubled that figure, showing a 6% rise in approval ratings.

The numbers themselves are not particularly surprising ... it's the details behind the Congressional numbers which might make one do a double-take.

As the poll analysis notes, Congressional approval among Independents actually dropped by 3 points (from 17% to 14%) and while approval among Democrats rose, it was by a statistically insignificant margin (21% to 23%) ... which leaves only one group to account for the net 6% rise. Hint - it's not the Green Party, or the Communists.

No, the gain in Congressional approval ratings rests almost entirely on the shoulders of Republicans, who more than doubled their support, going from 18% approval last month to 37% approval this month. That's a shocking figure. Voters of the party not in control of Congress have a better opinion of Congress than those that presumably elected the majority ... and it's not by some small, statistically insignificant figure, but rather by a whopping 14 percentage points.

On recollection, however, why not? After all, voters elected Democrats to the majority largely because they saw the country as headed in the wrong direction on a number of issues, most particularly the Iraq war. However, what exactly has the new majority done to address these issues? Some reform to Congressional lobbying statutes have been passed, but what else?

On wiretapping and other privacy rights, the "Democratic" Congress couldn't work fast enough to provide the administration with everything it wanted. Now the administration is pressing hard for legislation to absolve telecom companies which helped it break privacy laws in the past, and everything points to Congress acceding to this as well - even though a majority of citizens are opposed.

Attempts last week to restore habeas corpus rights failed in the face of a Republican filibuster, despite actually garnering a majority of votes in the Senate, and despite being supported by a majority of Americans.

Perhaps most obviously, Congress has done exactly nothing (nada, nil, zero, zilch) whatsoever to accelerate our exit from Iraq, which was most certainly the primary reason Democrats were restored to the majority in the first place. Instead, a supplementary funding bill was passed with some milestones attached, but failure to meet the vast majority of those milestones is apparently not viewed by the administration or most Republican members of Congress as a reason to leave, no matter what an ever-growing majority of Americans might want.

With a new funding bill needed as early as next month, and despite some moderately tough rhetoric, there is no reason whatsoever to think the Democratic majority will grow the necessary cojones to actually do something, such as pass a war funding bill with actual, hard limitations attached to it.

Why shouldn't Republicans be happier with the performance of Congress? On what substantial issue this year has the administration and Republicans not had their way? The only thing that comes to mind is immigration reform, and that was because the administration and Congressional Republicans were on different sides of the issue, so one or the other had to be disappointed - and, hey, the Congressional minority ended up "winning".

For some reason Democrats seem worried about filibusters and vetoes. Senate Republicans threaten to veto something, and Democrats agree to simple cloture votes. The President threatens to veto something, and Democrats refuse to challenge him on it. They seem to have entirely forgotten they were elected precisely because the majority of the electorate wants someone to stand up and say "enough is enough".

Make Republicans filibuster. So what if things get held up while they are taking turns talking themselves blue - nothing substantial the majority wants is getting done anyway because Senate Republicans are blocking votes in history-shattering numbers, all in an attempt to protect the President from being forced to veto legislation they know the majority of Americans want.

With any luck, enough of them will get sufficiently tired of their own voices to actually let a bill through for the President to veto ... then we can in plain black-and-white who really doesn't support the troops.