President Bush, considered by most competent individuals to be one of the worst presidents we've ever had, currently boasts an approval rating of 32%. Abysmal, but let's be honest, not as low as it should be. It was this type of presidential approval that skyrocketed the democrats in the 2006 midterm election to take both the house and senate. The excitement after the 06 election was huge. Here it was, we had just taken back both chambers of the congress and we were ready to throw 6 years of digressing right back in the presidents face. Then why does it seem to me that we've been moving in the other direction? The current congressional approval rating is actually LOWER than the president's. We have taken this golden opportunity and let it slip away one threat of a filibuster at a time. In the last four days the senate has voted to:
1. Ignore Habeas Corpus
2. Reject voting rights for the District of Columbia
3. Deny move-on.org freedom of speech
4. Reject a minimum period between deployment in Iraq
(Check out the poll on the right)
Wow!!! It's no wonder a higher percentage of republicans approve of the current congress than democrats. We continue to fund the war without any attempt to begin withdrawing troops, but we can't get the votes necessary to uphold some of our basic constitutional rights. We need to start holding the democrats more accountable. This is not what we elected them for, and this is not what is going to get them elected in '08. Of course it's tough to get anything done with republicans threatening to filibuster everything, but if they're going to play like that than the democrats have to fight back. They have the majority, they should be making the agenda. There are so many great things that liberal policy can do for the U.S. We just need to fight for it.
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