Voter Unrest Threatens Democrats in 2008

Widespread dissatisfaction with the government in Washington and the state of the nation in general could spell trouble for the Democrats in next year’s elections.

With President Bush’s approval ratings in the tank, the Democrats have been expected to follow their 2006 takeover of Congress with further gains in 2008 — including the White House.

But the history of recent decades shows that “whenever voters get this unhappy, unpredictable things happen,” John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei write in The Politico.

A recent USA Today/Gallup Poll found that 72 percent of those surveyed are dissatisfied with the way things are going in the U.S., and only 26 percent are satisfied.

“The last time the national mood was so gloomy was in 1992, when the first President Bush was ousted from the White House and H. Ross Perot received the highest percentage of the vote of any third party candidate in 80 years,” USA Today reports.

In a clearly ominous sign for Democrats, pollster Stan Greenberg found in October that 69 percent of voters disapprove of the job the Democratic-controlled Congress is doing, up 20 percent since January and the highest disapproval rating since the party reclaimed both Houses last year.

Congress fared even more poorly in a USA Today/Gallup Poll in August, receiving an approval rating of just 18 percent, and while its rating in the current poll has risen, it still stands at a miserable 29 percent.

The poll also found that 84 percent of Democratic respondents felt the country was on the wrong track.

And a survey by the Field Poll in California last week found that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has a job approval rating of just 35 percent in her home state — and a disapproval rating of 40 percent.

“The anti-Washington mood in the country — aimed at both a Republican president and a Democrat-controlled Congress — has reached breathtaking levels,” according to the report in The Politico.

Weak approval ratings for Congress led to a change in power benefiting the GOP in 1980 and 1994, and benefiting Democrats in 2006, pollster and Democratic consultant Mark Mellman noted.

Picking up a cue from voter unhappiness with the Democrats in the Senate and House, House Republican Whip Roy Blount of Missouri remarked at a news conference last week: “Never has a Congress spent so much time to accomplish so little.”