News as Advocacy

The Washington Post today led a story with the following - "President Bush has company at the bottom of the polls: The Democratic-led Congress is nearly as unpopular as he is. But look district by district, and the picture brightens for the new majority party. The first comprehensive survey of 2008 battleground House seats shows Democrats holding a distinct edge."

The latest polling on the President indeed shows his numbers are pretty much in the dumper - with Newsweek at 26%, Gallup at 32% and NBC/WSJ at 28%. The same NBC/WSJ poll shows that 48% of the voters think they need a new member of congress. The Real Clear Politics average for the President is a whopping 31.1% positive. But wait Congress' number is almost six points below that at 25.2%. So the term "nearly as unpopular" seems a bit off the mark. Disapproval numbers are also higher for Congress but only by a smidge - 63.8% to 64%.

But then you come to the clincher in the final paragraph of the page AO2 story it comes from the Democracy Corps a group run by James Carville and Stan Greenberg - two democrat operatives. The final paragraph sums up the story - "The Democracy Corps analysis included a big caveat: To capture additional districts, the Democratic Congress must show significant results, both in pressing the White House for a change of course in Iraq and in addressing domestic issues that voters care about. "These are both the best of times and challenging times for the Democrats," the memo concluded." I guess the Post believes that Carville and Greenberg's own press machine was not enough to get the word out.