Democrats seek direction as 2008 polls loom

by Stephen Collinson
AFP

Almost a year on from snatching Congress from the Republicans, US Democrats say they are doing a tremendous job -- but voters don't seem to be listening.

Riding a wave of anger over the Iraq war, Democrats carved narrow majorities in the House of Representatives and the Senate in November 2006, and planned to pummel a weak, lame duck President George W. Bush.

But they have disappointed supporters who hoped they would halt the war, recently sparked a nasty foreign policy row with Turkey, and have found that Bush, though wounded, remains a ferocious adversary.

Democrats are also still short of the two-thirds House and Senate majorities needed to override presidential vetoes, and have struggled in the area where their supporters had the highest hopes -- Iraq.

Repeated failures to force Bush to accept troop withdrawal timetables, changes to US strategy, and longer rest periods for American troops, appear to be overshadowing the rest of the Democratic agenda.

A new CNN/Opinion Research poll spells bad news for Democrats, finding Congress is less popular than Bush, with an approval rating of only 22 percent.

Harry Reid, the Senate Democratic leader, has his own woes: his popularity ratings in his state of Nevada have tumbled to just 32 percent.

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