Voters may not know the Dem agenda, but they like it anyway

January 30, 2006

The WaPo’s Dan Balz noted a couple of interesting results in the latest Post/ABC poll, particularly about the public’s desire for a change in the national direction.

A new Washington Post-ABC News poll shows Bush with a lower approval rating than any postwar president at the start of his sixth year in office — with the exception of Richard M. Nixon, who was crippled by Watergate.

Bush’s approval rating now stands at 42 percent, down from 46 percent at the beginning of the year, although still three percentage points higher than the low point of his presidency last November.

The poll also shows that the public prefers the direction Democrats in Congress would take the country as opposed to the path set by the president, that Americans trust Democrats over Republicans to address the country’s biggest problems and that they strongly favor Democrats over Republicans in their vote for the House.

In all, by a 51% to 35% margin, Americans said they’d prefer to go in the direction outlined by congressional Democrats rather than the direction established by the president. That 16-point gap in the Dems’ favor is a big increase on the 6-point gap congressional Dems enjoyed before last year’s State of the Union address, when the Dems’ agenda was up 45% to 39%.

The interesting thing about this is not just Bush’s faltering support, but the fact that the conventional wisdom keeps reminding us that Dems don’t have an agenda. Dems are obstructionists; Dems just stand in Bush’s way; Dems have no new ideas of their own — it’s a constant refrain from talking heads and conservative leaders. And yet, as Bush enters Year Six, voters in large numbers prefer the Dems’ vague, ambiguous, and unstated agenda to Bush’s approach.

As for which party voters prefer to lead Congress, the Post/ABC poll showed that by a 54% to 38% margin, people plan to vote for the Democratic candidate over the Republican candidate for the House. As the Post noted, “That is one of the largest margins favoring the Democrats in two decades.”

For that matter, by 51% to 37%, Americans said they trust the Democrats more than the Republicans with the main problems facing the country over the next few years, the first time since spring 1992 that Dems have gained more than 50% support on that question.

Consider this your morale boost for the day

If only the Dems had the guts to come out with
an agenda that sets the nation on an alternative,
progressive course, they might just get somewhere.
But they won’t. They’ll play Republican lite and
lose again. They won’t call for undoing Bush’s
madness and moving us toward the goals we
all aspire to.

These polls only indicate how much the public
despises what the Republicans have done to
this country. They do not indicate confidence
in the Democrats, and won’t translate into
2006 changes unless the Democrats take the
lead.

But they won’t. They’re too scared of losing
even more ground. They will not challenge Bush
on terror, on Iraq, on national security or this insane
military-industrial complex that Eisenhower warned
us about but we did not heed.

  • Sort of off-topic, but I’m curious. We always hear these sort of stretches to find precedent, or comparisons to Nixon, or whatever, that just don’t seem meaningful. “Lowest approval rating of a President at the start of his sixth year since WW2, except for Nixon!” It seems that the whole “sixth year” part is kind of pointless. Will that sort of thing be recorded by Guiness or World Almanac? It was worthy enough to state that Bush has the lowest approval rating since Nixon ever, but it seems he doesn’t anymore? Does he still?

    What I would like to know, on the other hand is: when did anyone else have an approval rating of 42%? It seems that that would be pretty common. I’m sure Clinton, Bush 1, Reagan, Carter, etc all hit 42% at some point, didn’t they? What about when Bush hit his lowest approval rating before it bounced back? And in what context did they each sink so low? Whose numbers besides Nixon reached as low as Bush’s lowest approval rating?

    I don’t really expect anyone to research or answer those questions for this post, but I’d love to know, and I think it would make those poll numbers seem more meaningful, rather than out in a vacuum.

    Back to the point: god dammit Dems, get out the message. Tell the country that you share our agenda! Otherwise this opportunity of historic dissatisfaction with the GOP will be wasted. Either that or the GOP will get worse and worse as they remain in power and you’ll become more of a laughingstock for failing to provide a coherent, meaningful alternative.

  • The CW established that dems have no new ideas, no plans, no backbone because it has been repeated by the media and the GOP enough times that even progressives have bought into it. The media facilitated this message without question.

    How many noticed the traditional media, the “neutral” media has anti-Democratic and pro-Bush storylines. Blaming the democrats is easy, but check the record they have been trying to get their message out; the press is not reporting it. Watch C-SPAN — it is the only medium in which democrats get any serious coverage.

    Meet the Press had 4 reporters on its show yesterday — all 4 were conservative, pro-Bush with no one to balance it. Cable TV “news” programmes — the same thing.

    Meanwhile as the democrats struggle to get their message out we are not helping by buying into the CW. Until people write and/or call the media demanding fair and balanced news they will continue tarnishing the democrats.

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