Concern and panic among the Democrats

John F. Harris and Jim VandeHei:

Congressional Democrats certainly know the power of a throw-the-bums-out message. It vaulted them to power a year ago this week. Little wonder anxiety is boiling over inside the new majority as lawmakers ponder a succession of polls and reach an inescapable conclusion: Lots of people think they are bums, too.

The anti-Washington mood in the country — aimed at both a Republican president and a Democrat-controlled Congress — has reached breathtaking levels. One has to reach back almost 30 years, to the low points of Jimmy Carter’s presidency, to find a time when there was such simultaneous disdain for both the executive and the legislative branches, as measured by Gallup approval ratings.

Amid the bloodshed and flawed execution of the Iraq war, there is no question why Bush is unpopular.

The political problems of congressional Democrats are more debatable — both their origins and how serious they are likely to be a year from now.

Interviews with lawmakers and top party operatives make clear that the Democratic House and Senate caucuses are divided into two camps. One group views the numbers with concern. The other group views them with panic.

“There are a lot of Democratic members who are consumed with” the sour state of public opinion, said one top party operative who works closely with the Democratic leadership.

From the Democratic perspective, there is definitely a case to be made for alarm. It is based on the history of recent decades that shows whenever voters get this unhappy, unpredictable things can happen.

One person who knows that well — his Democratic clients were beneficiaries of the phenomenon in such politically seismic years as 1992 and 2006 — is pollster Stan Greenberg. He came back from the field in October with numbers for NPR that showed 69 percent of voters disapprove of the job Congress is doing — up 20 points from last January and the highest disapproval rating since Democrats reclaimed their congressional majorities. More striking than the data was a focus group Greenberg observed with James Carville, a fellow consultant for the Democracy Corps project and his partner in Bill Clinton’s first presidential campaign.

“We’ve never seen people as angry and frustrated as they are now, ... even more than in ’92,” he said.

As it happens, however, Greenberg is firmly in the stay-calm camp of the Democratic debate. Along with pollster Mark Mellman, who also consults with Democrats, he has been trying to reassure anxious members with this sunny-side-up message: The public dislikes Republicans even more than they dislike you.

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Democrats think that there is stronger disaffection with Republicans because of the war. That will should change next year as voters become more aware of our winning the war in Iraq and realize that it could have been lost if Democrats had gotten their way. The Democrats have been wrong on the war for some time now as they follow the polls instead of logic and common sense. Eventually those polls should turn around leaving the Democrats in the tank.