America’s heading down the wrong path, and America’s political class stinks.
That’s the gist of the new NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll which finds that political leaders and government are now creating a unqiue moment in our political history: a consensus over how bad the government, the course of our nation and America’s leaders are.
Six in 10 Americans are dissatisfied with the state of the U.S. economy, more than 70 percent believe the country is headed in the wrong direction, and nearly 80 percent are down on the country’s political system, according to the latest NBC News / Wall Street Journal poll.
The frustration carries over to the nation’s political leaders, with President Barack Obama’s overall approval rating hitting a new low at 40 percent, and a mere 14 percent of the public giving Congress a thumbs up.
Who said you can’t get a larger number of Americans to agree on anything?
“We’re in the summer of our discontent,” said Democratic pollster Peter Hart, who conducted this survey with Republican pollster Bill McInturff. “Americans are cranky, unhappy… It is with everything going on the world.”
And if you think this means that we are therefore likely to see massive turn out at the polls this November, think again.
Yet because this discontent differs – among Democrats, Republicans, and independents – Hart cautions that Americans still aren’t likely to be storming the polls on Election Day in November.
“We’re unhappy, but we aren’t coalescing around an issue,” he said.
Indeed, 57 percent of respondents told pollsters that something upsets them enough to carry a protest sign for a day.
Additionally, right now all signs show a GOP win in the Congressional elections — which means the Senate. But not necessarily a massive “sweep” year:
“The public seems have moved beyond the plaintive cry of ‘Feel our pain!’ to the more angry pronouncement of ‘You are causing our pain!’” said Democratic pollster Fred Yang of Hart Research.
As for the politicians measured in the NBC/WSJ poll, President Obama’s overall job rating stands at an all-time low of 40 percent, a one-point drop from June.
That decline comes from slightly lower support from Democrats and African-American respondents.
Forty-two percent approve of the president’s handling of the economy, while only 36 percent approve of his handling of foreign policy.
That poll number nosedive on foreign policy is a major defeat for Obama and the Democrats. Foreign policy and national security have usually been the strengths of the Republican Party but earlier in his term, with the killing of Osama bin Laden and other actions, Obama had strong remarkable strength in that category. And pundits had said that signified a major win for Democrats since Republicans could no longer use foreign policy as a bludgeon against them. Not so today. AND:
And Obama’s favorable/unfavorable rating remains upside down at 40 percent positive, 47 percent negative.
But if the president’s numbers are bad, Congress’ are even worse.
Only 14 percent approve of the job Congress is doing – the seventh-straight NBC/WSJ poll dating back to 2011 when this rating has been below 15 percent.
In addition, Americans hold congressional Republicans in lower regard (19 percent favorable, 54 percent unfavorable) than congressional Democrats (31 percent favorable, 46 percent unfavorable).
The bottom line political news:
With the midterm elections less than three months away, the NBC/WSJ poll finds 44 percent of voters preferring a GOP-controlled Congress, and 43 percent preferring a Democratic-controlled one.
The good news for Republicans, according to GOP pollster McInturff: An incumbent president in the low 40s and seven-in-10 Americans thinking the country is on the wrong track is typically good for the opposition party.
The not-so good news for the GOP: High interest in the elections is down from past midterm elections. And Republicans continue to trail among women by double digits.
November, McInturff says, is shaping up to be “a good Republican cycle, but not like the wave elections we saw in ’06 or ’10.”
To change this: 1)Obama and the Democrats would have to do some things to win over soured parts of the electorate 2)Republicans would have to do some things to further sour the electorate on them.
The race is on to see which party is the least and politically negligent.
Graphic via shutterstock.com
Joe Gandelman is a former fulltime journalist who freelanced in India, Spain, Bangladesh and Cypress writing for publications such as the Christian Science Monitor and Newsweek. He also did radio reports from Madrid for NPR’s All Things Considered. He has worked on two U.S. newspapers and quit the news biz in 1990 to go into entertainment. He also has written for The Week and several online publications, did a column for Cagle Cartoons Syndicate and has appeared on CNN.