Who's Left?
by Jed Babbin (more by this author)
Posted 07/23/2007 ET
Updated 07/23/2007 ET
Who supports Congress? Who are the people who comprise the 14% of Americans that still have a ?great deal? or ?quite a lot? of confidence in the Democratic Congress?
Last month, Gallup reported that Congressional job approval was at 14%, ??the lowest in Gallup?s history of this measure and the lowest of any of the 16 institutions tested?? Last week, a Zogby poll said that Congress was still languishing at that incredibly low approval rating (14% said they were "excellent" or "good;" 83% said they were "fair" or "poor.") They?re doing even worse than the Republicans were just before being blown out of the majority in the 2006 election.
I thought that low number might correlate to the hard core, anti-war Michael Moore types. In a Thursday interview -- after recovering from Harry Reid?s Tuesday night anti-war Senate slumber party -- Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky) told me it wasn?t even the Michael Moore MoveOn.org folks.
The MoveOners held a rally Tuesday night in support of the Levin-Reid amendment what would have required troops to begin coming out of Iraq within 120 days of enactment. McConnell said, ?I?m told that the Democratic leadership was booed by MoveOn.org, so they?re not happy because the Democratic candidates had said, ?Elect us and we?ll end the war,? and they clearly can?t do that. The surveys indicate that the broad public is disapproving of them as well, and there are a reasonable number of Independent-type voters who are not particularly ideologically driven, who just want to see us do things ? you know, accomplish things. Those people aren?t happy too, so they?re losing both ways. They?re not only not satisfying the hard left, but they?re disappointing the independents who took a chance on them last November.?
According to a Fox News report, about eighty Dems took a break from the Senate pizza party to address the MoveOn.org rally Tuesday night. They were barely outnumbered by the 300 or so MoveOn?ers attending. Reid, Pelosi, Carl Levin (D-Mi), Chuckie Schumer (D-NY) and Dick Durbin (D-Il) chimed in on how mean the Republicans were being by blocking the Reid-Levin move. Pelosi was booed for ?going along? with the Republicans.
It?s tough times for the Dems when they can?t even rely on the Michael Moore - Barbra Streisand wing of their party. But that begs the question: just who are these people who still say Congress is doing a great job? Who in America likes what Reid, Pelosi and the rest are doing? If it?s not the looniest lefties -- in the immortal words of Butch and Sundance -- who are these guys?
To add up to 14%, though, there needs to be quite a few people.
Some of them must be people who are, um, a bit too busy to take pestiferous calls from pollsters. Like the mom who?s rushing out the door. It?s 3:02 pm, the kids are home for all of five minutes, changing into their sports gear and gathering up what they need for the school play rehearsal, most of which needs to be created from scratch by 3:05 pm. She?s bailing out the door, cramming them into the car with juice boxes, baseball helmets, soccer cleats and Frisbees. (Nobody is lucky enough to have all the kids playing the same sport the same year).
So mom answers the phone, thinking it?s her husband and wanting to tell him to pick something up for dinner, but it turns out to be some pollster who goes through a long spiel about how important the poll is. When he finally gets to the first question, Sally starts screaming about Jimmy throwing her Frisbee out the car window and mom passes her mood on to the pollster: ?SURE CONGRESS IS DOING FREAKING GREAT. WHO CARES? G?BYE,? and slams down the phone to run after the flying disc, now about forty yards down the street. So let?s say two or three percent are people like mom. Add to that the teenagers who tell the pollster they?re of voting age just to be funny, and who think the word ?congress? is boring unless used as an adjective attached to ?sexual.? We must be up to five percent by now.
Some of the 14-percenters must be the Dems employees, relatives and friends. (Don?t forget, there are at least 30,000 Congressional staffers, and more than half are Dems.) Subtract from them all mothers-in-law, some pain in the butt brothers-in-law and rival siblings, and even that base can?t be very large. Ok, that brings us up to maybe six or eight percent. Then there?s the Dems? most loyal constituency, the press.
Part of the wreckage of the Tuesday all-nighter was Eleanor Clift?s Friday Newsweek column. She wrote, ?Democrats need to do something dramatic, even histrionic, to dispel the perception they are powerless to stop the war, even if they are.? Think about that. Clift is perfectly happy to see the Dems pull stunts like the Tuesday night nonsense. And she -- like the rest of the hyperlib media mentionables -- is very happy with them when they do, even if it amounts to nothing more than fodder for the pundits. She, and the rest, wants more. Maybe Harry Reid should go on a hunger strike until Mitch McConnell lets him get a vote on the surrender date legislation. (Heck, if Durbin, Boxer and the rest would do the same, there?d be a lot less rotundity under the Capitol rotunda.)
Are we up to ten percent yet? Probably.
The rest? There are enough Yellow Dog/Blue Dog/Mutt Dems out there who don?t care what the Dems do so long as they keep trying to make the unions happy, people who don?t read newspapers and those who get all their political news by watching Oprah or Katie. We can't leave out everyone in Hollywood and those who think FDR is still doing a good job. If we add in all those loopy college profs who "teach" that Americans should apologize for everything since the Pilgrims landed and, yes, you can scrape up 14%.
Republicans should take no comfort in the Dems? distress. Among them still roam the EarMarxists, the ?moderate? RINOs, the ineffectual, the halt and the lame. But it won?t be hard for them to look good next year. In comparison, at least. If a few of them actually pushed really hard on a real border security law (a good outline for which is in this piece by Wayne Simmons) and the Repubs might actually regain control of Congress.
Please, dear reader, if you?re one of the 14% who Gallup polled, e-mail me. Tell me why you think this Congress of media hounds, surrender junkies, moonbat rhetoriticians and stunt performers are doing a good job. I?d really like to know.
-- Mr. Babbin is the editor of Human Events. He served as a deputy undersecretary of defense in President George H.W. Bush's administration. He is the author of "In the Words of our Enemies"(Regnery,2007) and (with Edward Timperlake) of "Showdown: Why China Wants War with the United States" (Regnery, 2006) and "Inside the Asylum: Why the UN and Old Europe are Worse than You Think" (Regnery, 2004). E-mail him at jbabbin@eaglepub.com.
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