Another Day, Another All-Time Low for Congress

USA Today reports on the latest Gallup poll:

As President Bush and Congress battle on the budget, homeland security and the war in Iraq, Americans blame both Republicans and Democrats for the impasse.

By more than 2-to-1 margins, they give the president, congressional Democrats and congressional Republicans unfavorable ratings in a USA TODAY/Gallup Poll released Monday. While Bush's ratings have been poor for most of the past two years, the two parties in Congress hit new lows in the poll.

"The American people just decided that Washington is either incompetent or irrelevant," said Frank Luntz, who has conducted polls for Republicans. "Republicans made promises they didn't keep, and Democrats made promises they couldn't keep. And now it's a pox on all their houses."

A look at the actual poll data offers bad news for both parties--but more for the Democrats. That's because while Americans disapprove of the job done by both Republicans and Democrats in Congress, the approval for Democrats is in free-fall. In February, voters disapproved of Congressional Democrats by a margin of 9 points (41%-50%); now the margin is 34 points (30%-64%). That's comparable to the rating for Republicans, who've lost much less ground.

In effect, Congressional Republicans and Democrats are starting from zero again. That's a huge loss for Democrats in comparison to where they started the year.

Whichever party does a better job of rehabilitating its image will strengthen its hand significantly for 2008.