The status quo isn’t working

June 5, 2007

Obviously it’s weak and cowardly to for policy makers to let poll results overrule good judgment and common sense. But when all three tell congressional Dems to more forcefully oppose the president’s war policy, it’s probably a good idea to pay attention.

Growing frustration with the performance of the Democratic Congress, combined with widespread public pessimism over President Bush’s temporary troop buildup in Iraq, has left satisfaction with the overall direction of the country at its lowest point in more than a decade, according to a new Washington Post-ABC News poll.

Almost six in 10 Americans said they do not think the additional troops sent to Iraq since the beginning of the year will help restore civil order there, and 53 percent — a new high in Post-ABC News polls — said they do not believe that the war has contributed to the long-term security of the United States.

Disapproval of Bush’s performance in office remains high, but the poll highlighted growing disapproval of the new Democratic majority in Congress. Just 39 percent said they approve of the job Congress is doing, down from 44 percent in April, when the new Congress was about 100 days into its term. More significant, approval of congressional Democrats dropped 10 percentage points over that same period, from 54 percent to 44 percent.

I was surprised to see several conservative observers say that support for Dems is connected to disappointment over the party’s policy agenda. One went so far as to suggest that Dems would fall even further if they pushed for withdrawal from Iraq.

The poll isn’t that ambiguous — Dems lost support because liberal Democrats and other opponents of the war are unsatisfied with the majority’s policy in Iraq. Support didn’t drop because Dems have moved to the left; support dropped because they didn’t move to the left enough. For conservatives to crow about these results is rather silly.

As for the mood of the country, it’s getting ugly out there.

Deep public skepticism about Iraq, concerns about the Democrats and Bush, and near-record-high gasoline prices appear to have combined to sour the overall mood in the country. In the new poll, 73 percent of Americans said the country is pretty seriously on the wrong track, while 25 percent said things are going in the right direction.

That gap is marginally wider than it was at the beginning of the year and represents the most gloomy expression of public sentiment since January 1996, when a face-off between President Bill Clinton and a Republican-controlled Congress over the budget led to an extended shutdown of the federal government.

But clearly the point that observers should take away from the poll is that the nation is not impressed with congressional Dems, who haven’t been fighting nearly hard enough.

The new poll showed that Americans have recalibrated their view of who is taking the lead in Washington. Earlier this year, majorities of Americans said they believed that the Democrats were taking the initiative in the capital, but now there is an even split, with 43 percent saying Bush is taking the stronger leadership role and 45 percent saying the Democrats are.

Again, there’s no mystery here. Bush and the GOP aren’t gaining on Dems at all. On the contrary, support for congressional Republicans is dropping, while Bush’s approval rating is stagnant. Dems are losing their support on taking the lead because a growing number of Americans are saying “neither.”

In April, when Dems were passing a withdrawal timeline, 54% of Americans approved of their job performance, while 44% disapproved. Almost immediately after Dems capitulated and passed war funding without restrictions, those numbers reversed, 44% approve, 49% disapprove. This probably isn’t a coincidence.

Dems still enjoy modest leads over Bush on handling every major policy issue, but the number of people who responded “neither” is at or near all-time highs. People know Republicans are wrong, and they’re disappointed Dems aren’t fighting Bush more aggressively. This should be discouraging for the GOP, and should help offer direction to the Dems.

Granted, the poll was conducted shortly after the Dems caved, when emotions were at their highest. But this should nevertheless be a message to Congress: people expect a stronger opposition to the president’s war policy.

“For conservatives to crow about these results is rather silly.”

It’s all they got left besides indictments.

  • 25% think we’re on the right track. Must be the same 25% waiting for the rapture. A friend used to say that 5% of the American population was delusional enough to be institutionalized. We do everything in a big way in America, so five-times that percentage is probably about right.

    In the absence of a credible third-party threat, the Dems will continue to be Rethuglites. ’08 is for the Dems to lose, but their calculus is the same as it always has been: play it safe, and the left has no where else to go.

    Does a draft-Gore movement have to be a hurricane before he responds? The country wants the Bush era over. Preferably now. Yet the Dems have their eyes closed, one finger up their nose and another up their collective fat asses, and they continue to bump into trees in a forest they can’t see. What a bunch of losers.

  • It’s been a grand total of five months of a Democratic majority, which in the Senate, at least, is in name only, with Tim Johnson still out recuperating from surgery and Joe Lieberman not voting with the Dem caucus as he promised.

    Part of the reason for people’s frustration is that the Dems campaigned for change, and change is what people want. Unfortunately, the reality is the kind of change that is needed in Iraq does not come via a majority that is not veto-proof. Change was not coming by Dems digging in their heels, either – the only thing that would have brought were unrelenting charges that we were – once again – showing how little we cared about the troops and how much we hated America. Oh, and how much we wanted the terrorists to win.

    Five measly months. It seems longer because we’ve wanted things to be different for a long, long time – it feels like Bush has been president forever and a day. And this is America, after all – land of instant gratification – where we want what we want when we want it and waiting is not a good thing.

    Yeah, I know – five measly months in which hundreds more Americans have died in a war that never needed to be fought. And hundreds more will die between now and September. I blame the president, and I blame the Republicans who did not vote as their constituents wanted them to. Why is it so hard for the Dems to stop pointing at each other and start pointing at those who are the real barrier to change? Absent the ability to bring the troops home with a veto-proof vote, we all know that the troops will be in Iraq until Bush figures out a way to do it on his terms, or until we get a Democrat in the WH and solid majority in Congress.

  • “Part of the reason for people’s frustration is that the Dems campaigned for change, and change is what people want.”

    Yes, that is part of the reason. Another part is the fact that the Dems were talking really, really big and tough from the get go once they returned to Congressional power, and then quickly folded regarding Iraq, when they had the American public strongly behind them, including a majority of GOP, on issues like timelines and benchmarks. It isn’t an issue of veto-proof majority–that is only a deception/excuse/red herring and one that has been discussed ad nauseum already. The Dems simply didn’t have the courage of their ‘convictions’ as they themselves expressed in very strong terms (and of the convictions of a strong majority of the American public) and didn’t want to take criticism from a deeply unpopular president.

    Thus, their favorability has declined.

  • “There go my followers, and I must run after them, for I am their leader.”

    It’s time for the Congressional Democrats to take some French political advice (which the above is).

    There is good news from yesterday, that the Democrats are going to schedule a series of Iraq-related votes over the summer that are designed to force Republicans to confront the reality of Bush’s policies and either break with him or get tied to him irrevocably. If these work, we may see some political progress and certainly the public will see the Democrats trying to take back the leadership. Pelosi’s quote on this is “The debate in Iraq will continue.”

    And it is important to note that this policy is the result of liberal unhappiness with the war funding votes, so it’s obvious that what we need to do is keep their feet to the fire.

  • I’d like to add this is only the tip of the iceberg.

    When the Bush administration came to power one of the first things they did was to reduce monitoring of pollution in lakes and rivers. The idea was that people can’t complain about (companies can’t be sued for) pollution they don’t know about.

    And of course it has been the modus operandi of the Bush administration on all issues: secrecy.

    e.g. they wanted to stop publicizing new rules in a single site…

    They knew that information is power.

    It seems to me that there have been several other regimes in the 20th century that knew this as well.

  • he anger and frustration about trying to end this “occupation” from an “invading force”..us, throws deliberation right out the window. If I understand this funding question correctly then delaying funding by vetoes and resubmissions or filibusters would be known as starving the troops and results in getting more soldiers killed from not having the “funding” to pay for humvees or body armor.
    Consider this: Bush sent unprepared, poorly equipped over strained, unrested and unprotected troops into this ‘splurge’ and would not hesitate to “use” them as bargaining chips. Each time one died the Dems would be blamed for not funding the troops. At this point funding the troops meant getting the equipment and supplies to them to help protect them. The longer the funding was held up by vetoes and resubmissions the more the troops would be used to “prove” how deadly delaying funding would be. Bush was more than willing to sacrifice soldier’s lives to prove this, the Democrats were not. They were not willing to make the troops suffer because of this President’s callousness.

    Democrats hate the war(I mean occupation). They knew it was going to be politically devastating to vote yes to the funding, when their supporters elected them to stop this occupation. But in this confused moment in time these poorly equipped, worn out soldiers needed someone to protect them from Bush’s failed policy and save lives by getting them the equipment they needed.
    The Dems were willing to give up a lot in order to save lives. Without a majority in the Senate to override a veto the “game” of delay known as “starving the troops” would continue with each veto or filibuster. It’s a damned if you do damned if you don’t measure right now and “protecting the troops” dominates the Democratic side as they continue to find a way to stop this insanity of Bush’s.
    What if Bush said, “I will order the troops home if you stop the impeachment”. Would you clamor the Dems are cowards for not continuing to impeach?
    Short of impeachment or getting a veto proof majority in the Senate, only a new Democratic Administration is going to stop this occupation and bring the troops home. (Filibusters and continuing submissions and vetoes just gets more troops killed. This course would be good to pursue if the soldiers weren’t already in the middle of a “turkey shoot” without armor)

    Congress can stop a war is not a myth…but at what price in human lives?

    The real myth is in believing the Democrats in Congress are not doing everything they can think of to “successfully” end this occupation and bring the troops home as quickly as they can. They decided that cutting the funds at this time, with this president, would be too costly in American blood and would not be protecting our most precious assets. Believe me, they have not deserted their mission of ending this occupation.

    As I understand it, some of the money has been allocated specifically for getting the equipment necessary to protect the troops now. All eyes are on this and now there can be no more excuses from this president( who should have made sure the soldiers had all the protective armor needed in the first place) not to provide the troops with the equipment they need and have requested.
    It’s a shame if not a crime for this president to hold the troops hostage in such a manner that he would allow them to be killed just to say, “See what happens when you don’t give me the funding I ask for?”

    The Dems hate it but after looking at all the angles in this moment of time, protecting the troops became top priority.
    So here’s your damn money Bush. Choke on it.

  • The thing that’s still lacking from the equation of course is strong public support for cutting off funding for the war. If Bush won’t agree to timelines and you don’t have the votes to override a veto, then there are no other options. And the country isn’t there yet, not by a long shot judging from it from everything I’ve seen. Strong support for timelines does not translate into support for cutting off funding. We’re talking maybe 25% in favor of forcing a stalemate.

    Without that support, not only can you not achieve your desired result but you also get more innocent people killed, now and in the long run, by trying to hold out on funding anyway. We already know that the pentagon would cancel orders for better armored vehicles and start cutting cut back on training — things that help keep soldiers alive — rather than start bringing anyone home immediately if the supplimental funding bill did not go through. It would not take much of that to raise enough of an outcry to peel off enough democrats to join Republicans in passing a funding bill anyway — just not one with a minimum wage increase attached and certainly not before Democrats took such a beating and Republicans reaped enough good will to significantly their prospects in next year’s elections. So if you’d like to still be in Iraq another 10 years from now then I would definitely counel against trying to have a little patience with the process right now.

    Of course “governing by polls” is always a dirty word any time you happen to disagree with a majority of your countrymen on something important, but when you come right down to it isn’t the government of a functioning democracy supposed to be an expression of the will of the people? And if not; if politicians are supposed to do what’s “really right” instead of what most people think is right, then who gets to decide what’s really right? If you start looking for recent examples of a small minority deciding they know better than everyone else what’s really right, then shoving it down the throat of the majority by any means at hand, you don’t have to look very far to find them. And frankly that hasn’t been working out all that well lately. Better to to get out and start changing some people’s minds on the merits of your arguments, I think. Of course that does take longer.

  • A lot of what CalD said. My reading of the polls is that a plurality of the electorate – say the ‘middle’ 40% – want the Democrats to do everything in their power to end the Iraq war except the only thing that could possibly work – cut off the funding. They’re not there yet – and that sucks. But it’s reality. Also reality is that the Bush administration does not care about polls, or Republicans in congress. They have *power* until 2009, and they aren’t running for re-election, so they just don’t care. Therefore the chances of getting our boys and girls out of Iraq before then are slim — it would require Republican cooperation that I just don’t think is going to materialize, even if the Rs have to do it to save their own asses. It took consistent right-wing electoral success to create this situation. It’s going to take more than one election to fix it.

    Think of our friends on the right wing. They’ve had their ups and downs over the past 30 years or so, but they’ve had more ups than downs, and that has been becasue those guys have just NEVER quit. They’ve never given up on the Repulican party, and they aren’t going to now. They’ll be staging a comback, maybe as early as next November 2008, if the likes of us give up on the Dems. Let’s don’t let it happen. Being right doesn’t mean shit if you lose – as we’ve seen during the Bush years.

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