Wednesday, July 09, 2008

If you think the Shrub is unpopular

(and of course, he is) you should check out the latest public ratings of our legislative branch:

The percentage of voters who give Congress good or excellent ratings has fallen to single digits for the first time in Rasmussen Reports tracking history. This month, just 9% say Congress is doing a good or excellent job. Most voters (52%) say Congress is doing a poor job, which ties the record high in that dubious category.

While I endorse the sentiment, I fear that the people are rating Congress so low because they are not "doing anything" to help them, whereas I rate Congress low because they are doing things!

And despite these heinous ratings, I predict that incumbents running for re-election will win at least 88% of their election races (Way way way back when I was a lad being mis-educated at Wash U., I read a cool article by Dick Fenno called "If Congress is the broken branch, how come we love our congressmen so much?" that addressed this phenomenon of low approval ratings and high re-election rates. Can't find it on the web though).

3 comments:

Dirty Davey said...

The intriguing thing I've seen reported elsewhere is that Republicans are more satisfied with the current Congress than are Democrats.

Which explains why I tell the DCCC to piss off, and give my money only to Democrats who don't vote with the Republicans.

Angus said...

I guess the repubs should be pretty happy with any congress that didn't try to impeach the shrub!!

Anonymous said...

Found a citation for that article, at least:

Fenno, R. F., Jr. (1975). If, as Ralph Nader Says, Congress is 'the Broken Branch,' How Come We Love our Congressmen So Much? In N. J. Ornstein (Ed.), Congress in Change, pp. 227-287. New York: Praeger.