from my blog, Basie!
If you take the time to read this blog or others like it, I would assume that you know the answer of this question is the Republican Party. What about Americans as a whole, though? Do they know who controls Congress? The National Conference of State Legislatures takes a gander to see the answer to these questions (warning, the link is a large PDF file).
Three-quarters of [Americans 26 and older] correctly identified the party of their state's governor and
three out of five knew the Republicans control Congress.
[...]
The political knowledge of the DotNet generation [ages 15-25] is dismayingly poor. Eight out of 10 of them can tell you that the television Simpsons live in Springfield, and 64 percent know that Ruben Studdard is the most recent American Idol. But less than half know the party of their state's governor, and only 40 percent can say which party controls Congress. Forty-eight percent acknowledge they don't know which party controls the Congress, and 19 percent got it wrong. [emphasis added]
Although this survey says quite a bit about the decline of the education system in the United States, an important, but obvious fact emerges: too many Americans do not know that the Republicans control Congress.
Congress, as a whole, is not popular. Just look at these results from the latest AP-Ipsos poll:
Overall, do you approve, disapprove or have mixed feelings about the way Congress is handling its job?
Total Approve 37
Total Disapprove 58
The problem for the Democrats is that not enough Americans tie their unhappiness with Congress to the Republican Party. If they did, surely the Democrats would have a shot in 2006.
What can be done about this? The answer is simple: there is no such thing as the "US Congress," there is only the "Republican Congress." There is no "House," there is a "Republican House." There is no Senate, there is a "Republican Senate."
Nationalize this. Really. Run national cable ads on non-traditional programs (please, no CNN, no Fox News, etc.) talking about some of the policies of the REPUBLICAN Congress. It might cost some money, but it will all be worth it.
Democrats should not waste time talking about the GOP. The GOP is just a way to confuse Americans about who to blame for woeful conservative policies. (It's like the Woody Allen joke that the Russian Revolution began when the peasants finally realized that the Tsar was the same person as the Czar.)
If the 58 percent of Americans who disapprove of Congress realize that it's the Republicans that they disapprove of, the Democrats have a shot in 2006. The stakes could not be higher, so get to it.
check out my political blog, Basie!