2008 House Stage looking good (Part 3 of N)

Glenn Greenwald, in a much longer post on the institutional weaknesses of the national political press has a nice little hook at the end of his post on Congressional approval ratings that cause me to up my evaluation of the probability of Democratic net gains in the House next cycle.

It is customary for one party to express "approval" for the branch of government controlled by that party. For instance... a large majority of "conservatives" (63-36%) and especially Republicans (81-17%) approve of Bush's performance.

But even with Democratic control of Congress, liberals are split almost evenly on whether they approve of the job Congress is doing (they actually disapprove by 46-45%), and Democrats are evenly split (45-45%). If liberals and Democrats supported their Congress even close to the levels of Republican support for Bush, Congress' approval numbers would be vastly higher still.

In 2008 liberals are going to go and vote for Democrats against conservative Republicans, so if we assume liberals had the same approval rating for Congress as Republicans do for Bush, Congress would be looking at approval ratings in the mid-50s which is an absurdly good number.

Recruiting, fundraising, and issue space are being dominated by Democrats right now, so when one of the weaker but still solid indicators is artificially depressed by the base expecting more from Congress, the field is tilting even harder towards Democrats in 2008.