Americans' Wish List: Better Politics and Better Politicians
By: Olivier Knox
S E E D E D C O N T E N T
Thanksgiving is firmly in the rearview mirror and we’re heading into the gift-giving season. A pair of public opinion polls suggest that what Americans really want is not something you can get on Cyber Monday: gentler politicians and a different Congress.
These surveys are not predictions for midterm elections now less than one year away. But they show a fairly deep dissatisfaction with the way things are going.
They also need to be taken with a grain of salt. In recent years, the congressional incumbent reelection rate has been near or above 90% even as the legislative branch’s approval ratings have rarely topped 30%.
Congress Plummets to 14% Approval
Americans’ approval of the job Congress is doing plummeted 11 points in October to 15%, according to Gallup. It’s now at 14%, while 80% disapprove . I would joke that we are firmly in “paid staff and blood relatives” territory but will keep quiet given the news media also has poor standing with the public at present.
“No one likes Congress” is something of an evergreen statement, admittedly. What’s interesting about this is the “why.” It turns out, the drop has been driven by Republicans.
In July, 61% of GOP voters approved of the Republican-led Congress. It dipped to 54% in September. Then it went off a cliff, dropping to 23% today. (Democratic approval has stayed below 10% all year.)
So what happened? Well, I’m speculating a bit but the government shutdown, for one, which was ongoing when this poll took place. For another, there was the protracted fight over releasing the Justice Department’s files related to convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein, whose 2019 death in prison was ruled a suicide.
During the former, Republicans shunned negotiations, and the House went on recess for a month. During the latter, Republican House Speaker Mike Johnson and President Donald Trump initially fought disclosures then ultimately lined up behind the release – which had been a pet cause of Trump’s Make America Great Again movement.
A ‘Watch Your Mouth’ Caucus?
Meanwhile, over at the nonpartisan Pew Research Center, a newly released survey found that 78% of Americans want elected officials to avoid using “heated or aggressive language” because such rhetoric could lead some people to take violent action.
That’s nearly four times the proportion of Americans – 20% – who told Pew that politicians “should be able to use heated language without worrying about how some people may act.”
Anxiety over violent political rhetoric has spiked as a result of a sharp increase in threats against elected officials .
This poll also features intriguing results anchored in partisanship.
Among Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents, 83% say that kind of language should be avoided. It’s unchanged since Pew first asked the question in 2019.
Republicans have moved considerably on this question. In the latest poll, 75% of Republicans and Republican-leaning independents say politicians should avoid heated or aggressive language. That’s up from 56% in early 2024 and 61% in 2019.
Why? Well, Pew does not break these numbers down on a monthly level. But surely the assassination attempts on Trump and the killing of Turning Point founder Charlie Kirk were factors.
Seasonal Gift-Giver won’t be delivering less caustic politicians or a better Congress, so voters will have to decide if they deliver those themselves.
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Political articles are rare among the greater variety of interest articles that I post, but in order to be of interest to the vast majority of NT members I decided to post one. After all, as the saying goes, If you can't beat them, join them.
In the past couple of decades since I've been away from Canada and my frequent sojourns into the USA, the political divisiveness in the USA seems to have grown to such an extent that it verges on a kind of civil war. Never before had I seen restaurants turn away customers because their political loyalty was different, or battles between such loyalties at family reunions, or the kind of shit slinging that takes place on the internet, even on such sites as thenewstalkers.
What a change it has been since my brother (who just died yesterday so you will rarely, if ever, see jokes posted on my Non-Political group again) and I owned a golf condo in Florida, or the days when I spent a lot of my time travelling all around the USA, from Hawaii to Nantucket, from Miami to Chicago, from Buffalo to Dallas, from Washington D.C to Palm Springs, from L.A. to St. Louis, from New York City to San Francisco, from Boston to Baltimore, and as Woodie wrote and sang "From California, to the New York Island, From the redwood forest, to the gulf stream waters", etc etc etc and now, never again.
I think that Gallup and Pew are the most reliable polling organizaitons in the USA so I think the bad news that they are posting is quite telling. I sure hope that it will not take a revolution for America to heal, especially when so many people have guns, and those who use them to make some kind of point.