Polls these days aren't exactly filled with surprises. Tea Party people are actually conservative Republicans (who knew? We did.) Teabaggers want smaller government and less taxes (and take your hands off my Medicare and Social Security.) As Cillizza puts it:
The Gallup data, when combined with the Resurgent Republic findings, suggests that the constant comparisons between today's tea party voter and the supporters of Ross Perot in the early 1990s are simply wrong.
And voters are unhappy with Congress. The latest Marist poll (MoE +/- 3), with trend lines:
This looks at "my own" vs "the other guy". Not much change, and not good for incumbents.
Also not much change (and not favoring Democrats) is the generic ballot, this a compilation from pollster.com:
Also not much change over the last six months.
The best thing Democrats have going for them is that when you get down to it, folks don't like Republicans. As I noted with the last NBC/WSJ poll:
You know people are frustrated when they suggest voting for Republicans. People don't like Republicans (their positive/negative score is -12). But what's happened is negative perception of Democrats (now at -9) is growing.
So expect a continued campaign of "we're better than they are" from Democrats because nobody can win in a referendum on themselves.
Can that work? Well, as this guy said (me, actually):
There’s two parts to this. Part two is the public’s dislike of Republicans (thank you, George W. Bush.) That’s enduring, and the concentrating on gaffes and more than gaffes (e.g. the tea party’s inherent lack of coherent governing agenda, as Lindsay Grahamrecognized in this weekend’s NY Times magazine) is best left to the party structure, and it’s good politics at that. Exposing the Republicans as unserious and unready for governing is important (they are both. See Bobby Jindal.)
But part one, touting the W.H. record and explaining where we are going, is in short supply. That Democrats have accomplished a great deal, and that the recession is still with us, and that deficits are important but less important than stimulus, are all unarticulated concepts except on the left (we generally realize it first, the country then follows at their own pace. See George W Bush, see Iraq War.) That is the theoretical reason Washington should pay more attention to progressives. The practical reason is that conservative Republicans won’t vote for moderate Democrats, so you might try and get Democrats to vote for Democrats.
I'm still waiting for that last bit to get ratcheted up. Appointing Donald Berwick to CMS is a great start.
Nonetheless, the CW is that there'll be losses for Democrats in November. Amy Walter :
A series of focus groups in five states conducted last month for the conservative nonprofit group Resurgent Republic found that while independent voters have soured on Obama, they haven't abandoned him completely. The same can't be said of their feelings for congressional Democrats.
In analyzing one such group in Orlando, GOP pollster Jan van Lohuizen concluded that it was two issues, health care and BP's oil spill, that ultimately soured these independent voters on Obama. On health care, van Lohuizen blames the process of the debate more than the substance for turning off independents. As for BP, voters are disappointed that they "don't see strong leadership" from the president.
While Obama could still win these voters back in 2012, van Lohuizen says, they are "pretty well lost" to Democrats this fall.
Odd, because health reform is becoming more popular, not less. But Amy's point remains: something big needs to happen beyond a little drift upward to change the trajectories seen in the graphs. At this point, the question isn't whether Dems will see losses (the economy guarantees that outcome), it's how many and whether control of Congress changes.
For those who think "what difference does it make," that's what we heard in 2000 and 2004 (see John Roberts, Sam Alito George W. Bush and Terri Schiavo for examples of "unlikely under Democrats.") In fact, I am reminded of what my grandmother always said: it could always be worse, and if you wait long enough, it will be. Still, it will be worse still if we do nothing but complain.