Behind Dems’ Record Low Approval Rating

House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, President Obama, and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid. Lauren Victoria Burke/WDCPIX.com.

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A new CBS News poll out last night reveals approval levels have declined to an all-time, basement low for Obama’s Democratic Party, with only 37 percent of those polled saying they have a favorable view of the Dems. That’s a decrease of 20 percentage points in the past year. Then again, Republican Party’s image isn’t much better, either: 33 percent approve of Michael “Keepin’ It Real” Steele and Co. And in the “unfavorable” view category, it’s a neck-and-neck race between which party gets the mantle of most loathed by American populace so sick of Washington the name evokes disgust and resentment—55 percent of Americans have a negative view of the GOP, and 54 percent say the same about Democrats.

The conclusion here is obvious: If you’re a candidate running for national or even state political office, you basically have to do everything you can to separate yourself from the folks in Washington, casting yourself in the starkest terms possible as an outsider untainted by the influence and money of modern-day politics. Take Rory Reid, a gubernatorial candidate in Nevada and the son of Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.). The other day I was clicking around Reid’s site, reading up on his ambitious new education reform plan. Then it hit me: You’d never know that Rory was the son of Harry from reading Rory’s website. The only mention I could find of papa Reid was in a smattering of press clippings posted on the site. As one Nevadan wrote me in an email recently, “it doesn’t take a rocket scientist to see the negative effects that could arise from such a relationship.”

Back to the CBS poll. While the broad political data is mostly predictable, the economic-related results are more telling. For instance, 59 percent of respondents said Wall Street has undue influence on Washington. That’s a no-brainer—consider that the finance, insurance, and real estate (or FIRE) sector has spent more than $4 billion lobbying Washington in the last decade or so. And when Washington had the chance to beat back the Wall Street influence machine by limiting the size of big banks, constraining not just their financial size but the size of their political influence, too, the Senate failed to act and the White House did nothing. And there’s little chance the House and Senate together will revive that idea.

What’s more, the poll shows the public strongly backs government support for homeowners—but not bank bailouts. Which means the Obama administration has it all backward: It’s poured billions of dollars and plenty of political capital into the massively unpopular bailouts; but the program that could win them public support, the Making Home Affordable program, the Treasury’s homeowner rescue, has been a complete mess. Some would say a failure.

Indeed, with the perilous state of the economy still looming large on the minds of Americans (eight of 10 told CBS the economy remained in bad shape), the administration’s inability to help homeowners as it helped the banks could prove disastrous in this fall’s elections.

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WHO DOESN’T LOVE A POSITIVE STORY—OR TWO?

“Great journalism really does make a difference in this world: it can even save kids.”

That’s what a civil rights lawyer wrote to Julia Lurie, the day after her major investigation into a psychiatric hospital chain that uses foster children as “cash cows” published, letting her know he was using her findings that same day in a hearing to keep a child out of one of the facilities we investigated.

That’s awesome. As is the fact that Julia, who spent a full year reporting this challenging story, promptly heard from a Senate committee that will use her work in their own investigation of Universal Health Services. There’s no doubt her revelations will continue to have a big impact in the months and years to come.

Like another story about Mother Jones’ real-world impact.

This one, a multiyear investigation, published in 2021, exposed conditions in sugar work camps in the Dominican Republic owned by Central Romana—the conglomerate behind brands like C&H and Domino, whose product ends up in our Hershey bars and other sweets. A year ago, the Biden administration banned sugar imports from Central Romana. And just recently, we learned of a previously undisclosed investigation from the Department of Homeland Security, looking into working conditions at Central Romana. How big of a deal is this?

“This could be the first time a corporation would be held criminally liable for forced labor in their own supply chains,” according to a retired special agent we talked to.

Wow.

And it is only because Mother Jones is funded primarily by donations from readers that we can mount ambitious, yearlong—or more—investigations like these two stories that are making waves.

About that: It’s unfathomably hard in the news business right now, and we came up about $28,000 short during our recent fall fundraising campaign. We simply have to make that up soon to avoid falling further behind than can be made up for, or needing to somehow trim $1 million from our budget, like happened last year.

If you can, please support the reporting you get from Mother Jones—that exists to make a difference, not a profit—with a donation of any amount today. We need more donations than normal to come in from this specific blurb to help close our funding gap before it gets any bigger.

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