Do Voters Across The Spectrum Really Hate Their Elected Officials? Keith Ellison Threatens Primaries Against Democrats Allied With Banks Against Working Families

A new poll from Marist for McClatchy indicates that conservative mistrust for the Republican Party is very high-- as is progressive mistrust in the Democratic Party. Both party bases are fed up with their representatives in Congress. That's hardly newsworthy, since the two Party Establishments have been relatively successful in painting themselves as the essential lesser of two evils in a simplistic equation for voters.

By a 66-28% margin, U.S. voters disapprove of the job congressional Republicans are doing-- and when you take Democrats and independents out of the sample, approval among Republicans for Republicans goes up to 51-45%, although among self-identified conservatives disapproval is heavier, 53-41%.

American voters disapprove of Democrats by around the same margin, 65-27% and, again, when you take Republicans and independents out of the mix, Democratic approval moves up to 55-33%. Among self-identified liberals, though, Democratic Party electeds are still underwater-- 48-45%.

After the big GOP wins in the midterms last month, only 35% of voters think the changes they will try to accomplish will be positive. Voters are very pessimistic across most issues, including their own family's finances. Main points from the poll:

• Regardless of party, more than six in ten voters, 61%, think the Republicans in Congress will have more influence over the direction of the nation in 2015.  29% believe President Obama will be the driving force, and 2% report neither will be in command.

• When it comes to who voters want to have more influence, 48% prefer the GOP to take the lead while 42% want Obama in charge. Looking at party, while 93% of Republicans want the GOP to have the most impact, 82% of Democrats look to President Obama to take the lead. 47% of independents turn to the GOP for leadership, and 40% put their stock in President Obama.

• While 35% of voters think the Republican-controlled Congress will effect change for the better, a plurality, 40%, doesn’t expect to see any impact at all. One in five, 20%, reports GOP control will be change for the worse.

• Seven in ten voters, 70%, think it is better for government officials to compromise to find solutions than stand on principle. Democrats, 82%, are more likely than Republicans, 59%, to choose to compromise. More than one-third of Republicans, 36%, value principle over compromise compared with 15% of Democrats who have this view.

• Close to two-thirds of Americans, 64%, are pessimistic about the direction of the country. 31% say the nation is on track, and 6% are unsure. Earlier this fall, 61% of residents said the country was going in the wrong direction, and 35% reported it was moving in the right one.

• The job approval rating of congressional Democrats is at its lowest point, 27%, since McClatchy-Marist began reporting this question. The previous low for Democrats was 28% and occurred in November of 2011. In October, 33% of voters approved of how the Democrats were doing their job.

• The job approval rating of the Republicans in Congress, 28%, also falls short in voters’ eyes.  In October, 24% of registered voters approved of how the congressional GOP was doing its job.

• 43% of registered voters nationally approve of the job President Obama is doing in office while 52% disapprove. Obama’s approval rating stood at 46% in October. Mr. Obama’s favorable rating is also upside down. 44% have a favorable impression of him while a majority, 54%, does not. Voters divided on the president’s image, 48% to 49%, respectively, earlier this fall.

• 38% of the national electorate, down from 46% in October, approve of how the president is handling foreign policy. 52% disapprove, and 10% are unsure.

• On his handling of the economy, 41% of voters approve of how the president is tackling the issue. This is unchanged from 41% in McClatchy-Marist’s previous survey. 55% currently disapprove of how President Obama is dealing with the economy.

• More than six in ten registered voters nationally, 61%, want the Republicans in Congress to make changes to the 2010 health care law. This includes 23% who want the law repealed and 38% who favor modifications to the legislation. 34%, though, say the GOP should focus their efforts on other issues. While 53% of Democrats want the GOP to focus on other issues, and 48% of Republicans want to eliminate the law, 38% of Democrats and 35% of Republicans want changes to be made to the law. A plurality of independents, 43%, would like the health care law modified.

• 51% of Americans expect their personal family finances to stay about the same in the coming year. 32% think they will see an improvement, and 17% believe their family’s financial situation will get worse. In October, 54% reported their money matters would be status quo, 30% thought they would get better, and 17% believed they would get worse.

Could there be a better set-up for a Hillary Clinton-Jeb Bush presidential contest in two years? I mean a worse set-up? Wall Street wins no matter what voters do. And America gets screwed... again. And you look down on people who opt out and just don't vote? Or vote for someone like Ralph Nader?

Earlier tonight Congressional Progressive Caucus co-chair Keith Ellison spoke on a DFA call about the role of economic populism in the Democratic Party. He was eager, he said, to see Elizabeth Warren enter the presidential race-- even if just to make Clinton a better candidate. "Elizabeth Warren is one of the great, bright lights of our time," he said and worried that Hillary Clinton "could just walk into the general [election] without having committed to some important real, real economic populism."

He also warned the Republican wing of the Democratic Party-- the Blue Dogs and New Dems ( what he called "our weak-kneed Democratic friends") that "we’re watching, and if they’re standing with the corporatocracy and the big banks, we’ll find some other people who will stand with the people."

Are Americans Losing Faith In The Republican Party As A Legitimate Institution?

Tuesday, the Wall Street Journal reported that Kansas Republicans, so sick of far right extremist lunatic Sam Brownback, once their senator and now their governor, that they're going to help a Democrat beat him! Over 100 prominent Republicans endorsed Paul Davis, including 2 former lieutenant governors, a former congresswoman and the state insurance commissioner.

The nonpartisan Cook Political Report in recent days shifted its prediction of the race from "leaning Republican'' to tossup.

The pushback against Mr. Brownback from some in the GOP is due in part to his effort two years ago to rid the state Senate of its more centrist Republican members. In 2012, he backed several challengers in GOP statehouse primaries, arguing that the incumbents weren't conservative enough. The campaign was successful, with voters ousting several veteran Republican senators, including the chamber's president.

Publicly available polling in the governor's race is scant. The most recent poll, by SurveyUSA, had Mr. Davis leading Mr. Brownback by 6 percentage points among likely voters. Mr. Brownback captured only 62% of those who identified themselves as Republicans, while Mr. Davis won support from 89% of Democrats.

In a poll this week, 37% of Mississippi Republicans said they would back the Confederate side if there was another Civil War. These people have two senators and 3 House Members making decisions for normal Americans in Washington. (Mississippi's 4th congressman, Bennie Thompson, has a carefully drawn district encompassing the African-American neighborhoods of Jackson plus virtually the whole heavily black Mississippi Delta counties, from just north of Natchez all the way up past Vicksburg, Greenville and Clarksdale and Tunica's "Sugar Ditch Alley" to the casino town of Robinsonville/Tunica Resorts. Mississippi is 37.4% African-American, MS-02, Thompson's district is 65.2% African-American.) It's just another story of coordinated Republican gerrymandering undermining American democracy.

Everything the Republicans do undermines American democracy. Right-wing parties exist to undermine democracy… and they always have, all through history. They exist to protect the interests of the rich and powerful and to make sure majorities of common folk don't intrude where they're not welcome.

Republicans are tied in knots-- and have the Congress tied in knots-- even over something as simple and uncontroversial as fixing the country's highways and bridges. As Wisconsin Democrat Mark Pocan said this week, "Speaker Boehner’s lawsuit against the president is frivolous and purely political." And most Americans agree with him that it's just another Republican stunt that keeps them from doing anything substantive for the American people, while pleasing their Hate Talk Radio base.

Gallup also released a poll this week and the results were inevitable: "Fifteen percent of Americans approve of the way Congress is handling its job… Congress's low approval ratings for the past several years underscore the idea that Americans think their representative bodies need dramatic changes. Gallup in the current poll asked respondents in an open-ended format what their most important recommendation to fix Congress would be. More than one in five Americans (22%) are ready to start over entirely, saying all members should be fired or replaced."

Time For House Republicans To Lead The Country Into A War Against Iran?

The Good Lord, in His wisdom, has dealt Trent Franks a most unfortunate hand-- and he's been taking it out on the American people for a very long time

Over 60% of American voters understand it was the Republicans who are behind the manufactured crisis threatening a worldwide economic catastrophe-- and they blame them for it. Congressional approval is now an astounding 5% and independents have turned on the GOP in a BIG way.

Democrats lead the generic Congressional ballot 46/41, including a 42/33 lead with independents. Independents have shifted 21 points on the generic ballot from July when Republicans had a 39/27 advantage with them. The lean toward Democrats for next year reflects who they blame for the shutdown. By a 51/37 margin they say Republicans are more at fault than Democrats, and by a 57/41 margin they think Congress is more to blame than the President.

The Republican Party is viewed favorably by 28% of Americans-- the lowest since Gallup started polling that question. And even a right-wing ideologue like John Podhoretz is willing to write for general consumption that right-wing extremists have pushed the badly-led congressional Republicans into committing political suicide.

This is what my fellow conservatives who are acting as the enablers for irresponsible GOP politicians seem not to understand. They like this fight, because they think they’re helping to hold the line on ObamaCare and government spending. They think that they’re supported by a vast silent majority of Americans who dislike what they dislike and want what they want.

…One thing we know for sure is that it’s not an equal fight, this fight between a man who received 65 million votes nationwide and a man who received 246,000 votes in one congressional district in Ohio.

Meanwhile, Boehner is basically the face of the US Congress in the eyes of the public. John Boehner is also the effective head of the Republican Party. And the US Congress is viewed favorably by… 11 percent of Americans.

Eleven percent.

When I interact with these conservatives, they say they don’t care about the GOP; what they care about are conservative ideas.

They’re right not to assign special glory or power to a political organization and to hold ideas above party. But here’s the condundrum: There is only one electoral vehicle for conservative ideas in the United States-- the Republican Party.

It’s one thing to refuse to waste your time buffing and polishing the vehicle so that it looks nice and pretty; that’s what political hacks do, and ideologues have every right to disdain such frippery.

But if, in the guise of making the vehicle function better, you muck up the engine, smash the windshield, put the wrong tires on it and pour antifreeze in the gas tank, you are impeding its forward movement. You’re ruining it, not repairing it.

It may not have been a very good vehicle in the first place, and you may think it couldn’t drive worse, but oh man, could it ever. And it’s the only one you’ve got.

So could there possibly be a better time for Republicans to try to rally the nation around them with a full scale war? Remember when war criminals like Wolfowitz, Rumsfield, Bush, Bolton and Cheney were planting sentiments like everyone wants to go to Baghdad. Real men want to go to Tehran. One real man-- albeit a notorious closet case-- who never got over it is Arizona's most extreme right congressman, crazed little Trent Franks. Wednesday, Foreign Policy gave the bloodthirsty crackpot and his new bill the spotlight:

A new bill authorizing a U.S. military strike against Iran is set to drop in Congress on Thursday-- just days after leaders in Washington and Tehran began talking openly after three decades of silence.

The bill, sponsored by Rep. Trent Franks (R-AZ), is currently being shopped around to various House offices this week in search of a co-sponsor, The Cable has learned. Besides providing President Obama with "all options" to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapons capability, the bill ticks off a list of grievances with the Islamic state dating back 30 years on everything from verbal threats to nuclear enrichment violations.

"Since at least the late 1980s, Iran has engaged in a sustained and well-documented pattern of illicit and deceptive activities to acquire a nuclear weapons capability and has provided weapons, training, funding, and direction to terrorist groups," reads the bill.

The hawkish legislation, which essentially hands the president the full-force of the U.S. military if negotiations fail, comes just one week before Tehran sits down with six major powers in Geneva to discuss its nuclear program. For some foreign policy observers on the Hill, it threatens to spoil the already-delicate negotiations.

"It's hard to imagine a more counterproductive effort to slow the development of Iran's nuclear program-- especially when sanctions have succeeded in bringing the Iranians back to the negotiating table," a Congressional aide tells The Cable. "This attempt to legislate the use of force in Iran is so far out of the mainstream that it makes Netanyahu look like a bleeding heart peacenik in comparison."

Rebuffing critics, Franks insists now is the perfect time to hand Obama the keys to the military. "There's never been a more important time to make sure that any negotiations are backed up by a credible military capability," he told The Cable. "Iran has watched the United States allow redline after redline pass and has played rope-a-dope with the United States to the extent that they're on the cusp of being able to become a nuclear armed nation in potentially months."

Ahead of next week's talks, Iran's newly-elected President Hassan Rouhani has made a series of friendly overtures with the West, including everything from pledging to never develop nuclear weapons to writing Obama letters to mentioning Israel by name -- all of which culminated in a historic phone call with President Obama last month. But no one thinks coming to an agreement on Iran's nuclear program is going to be easy.

Meanwhile, yet another GOP closet case obsessed with war and gore, Lindsey Graham (R-SC), is crafting a similar bill for the Senate to reject. What exactly are these Republican closet cases so scared about that makes them need to prove something-- something dark and ugly-- to the American people? Doesn't the congressional health care plan include psychiatric services?