The latest CNN poll shows for the first time since the Republicans won control of the House in the 2010 midterms a clear 54% majority of Americans think the GOP being in control of the House is a bad thing.
According to the survey, 54% say it's a bad thing that the GOP controls the House, up 11 points from last December, soon after the 2012 elections when the Republicans kept control of the chamber. Only 38% say it's a good thing the GOP controls the House, a 13-point dive from the end of last year.
Let's put this in chart form to see how far they've fallen.
Good Bad
10/2013 38% 54%
12/2012 51% 43%
Yes, shortly after the GOP kept the House in 2012, a majority of Americans said that was a good thing. No more. And long gone are the days when huge chunks of Americans didn't even know who John Boehner was, even after he became Speaker.
"We fought the good fight. We just didn't win," Boehner said at the end of the shutdown. And while he received a standing ovation at a closed gathering of House Republicans as the crisis came to a close, he may not see anything to applaud in the new poll.
"John Boehner fares just as badly as the GOP," CNN Polling Director Keating Holland said. "Sixty-three percent of all Americans think that Boehner should be replaced as Speaker of the House, a view shared by roughly half of all Republicans."
According to the poll, only 30% of the public says Boehner, who became Speaker in January 2011, should continue in that role.
Note that this didn't really reflect badly on Obama, as the GOP was hoping it would.
Only 12% of those questioned say they approve of the job Congress is doing, just two points higher than the historic low in CNN polling. And 86% give federal lawmakers a thumbs-down, also near the all-time high.
Forty-four percent say they approve of the job the President is doing with 52% saying they disapprove.
"Barack Obama's numbers are pretty anemic, but he remains in much better shape than the GOP," Holland said. "Even though Obama's approval rating remains stuck in the mid-40s, it didn't take a hit during the shutdown -- 44% just before the shutdown began; 44% now."
And whaddaya know, the GOP's gonna hate this part of it too.
Majority favor health care law or say it doesn't go far enough
According to the poll, just more than four in 10 say they favor the law, with 56% opposed to it.
But of those opposed, 38% say they are against the law because they think it's too liberal and 12% say it's not liberal enough. That means that 53% either support Obamacare, or say it's not liberal enough.
The health care numbers are little changed from late last month, just before the start of the shutdown.
The question now is whether the GOP's numbers will improve now that the government is open again, and we avoided default. We've seen Americans have way too short of a memory in the past. Let's see if these numbers continue to remain bad for Republicans, because we're still over a year away from the 2014 midterms, and the generic ballot always
looks better for Democrats a year out than what actually ends up happening.