Sam Says

Author: Sam Wilson

There is something kind of screwy going on in the national political scene right now. The GOP just a few months ago kept the White House and increased its majority in both houses of Congress, but an Associated Press poll last week found the president's approval rating stood at just 44 percent with 54 percent disaproving.

To put that in perspective: since President Truman, the lowest approval rating of a re-elected President at this point in his term was President Reagan, and his approval rating stood at 56 percent.

But what interests me more is that Congress's approval rating is a wow-za! Thiry-seven percent. That is pretty flippin terrible.

So, we have a one party governing structure that the majority of people do not like. This means that if the Democrats want to gain some power, maybe even pick up some seats in the 2006 election, they very well could.

Unfortunately for them though, they still do not seem to really want it. Granted they are doing much better than they did under the president's first term, but they need to get their act together.

This means that in 2006 they cannot run a bunch of local races where Democratic candidate X runs against Republican candidate Y in whatever state or district. They need to run a national campaign billing potential Democratic control of Congress versus the incumbent Republican Congress.

In 1994, the GOP took control of Congress by running such a campaign. Their "Contract for America" was a promise to end the corruption of the far too long incumbent Democratic majority. "Contract for America" included all sorts of ideas, some of which were legitimate and passed. Others that were rather far-fetched - abolishing the Department of Education and a Constitutional amendment setting term limits for Congress - and were probably included only to make it seem like more of a reform movement.

The reason I am discouraged with the Democrats right now is that they are doing much better than they have been. Their unity opposing the president's Social Security design is admirable. But they are faltering on other issues.

This Wednesday Congress will - barring an act of divine justice - pass a truly atrocious bankruptcy bill. This bill is a disgusting give away to credit card companies and other lenders. It truly rips the guts out of Americans in debt, even those who go into debt due to illness and loss of employment.

Where the Democrats failed on this bill is that knowing it would pass with the GOP majority, lots of Democrats supported it, so that they could keep getting money from said lenders. To run a national campaign, they need to be able to be united in saying, "The GOP did this and we opposed it on principal." By voting for the bill, the guilty Democrats made it bipartisan.

But they still have a lot of time between now and November 2006. They need to get at the public about bringing reform to Congress. And they have so many ways to do this, like ousting lowlife Tom DeLay from power, proposing legislation to make redistricting more fair by ending gerrymandering, closing the corporate loopholes opened up by the Bush tax cuts and most basically, offering a power check to a President who has never really known such a thing.

Thirty-seven percent. They should be able to do this.