Of course, congressional polls always are.  But this one is especially worthless.  Fortunately no one is breathless over it.  

The right-leaning Rasmussen Reports did a poll late last week to gauge congressional satisfaction  that showed 57% of respondents would like to replace the whole congress.




Polls like this are especially ridiculous, but lets unpack it a little bit anyway, and here is a good place to start: Overall, these numbers are little changed since last October. You may recall that we had a general election just days after the previous poll where none of that anger translated into incumbents losing their seats en masse, even though 435 Representatives and 30-odd Senators were standing for election.  

Polls like this make for a few seconds of entertaining soundbites because some idiotic hairdo will inevitably ask an elected legislator “What about the Rassmussen poll that registers wide dissatisfaction with the congress?  A majority wants to throw you all out!”  

Just once, I want an elected official to look at one of these moronic “reporters” and say “Polls like that are useless and you damned well know it, and if you don’t, get out of my press conference right now and go back to high school and come back when you have passed American Government.”  Play that on your 24-hour-loop, jackasses.

Congress, by the very nature of the beast, is going to have many detractors.  That is because it is a large, diverse body made up of 535 individual legislators and of all those names, only three ever appear on MY ballot.  It’s those other 532 polecats and crooks  (who ought to be indicted before lunch) that are screwing things up, you see.  

It is just the nature of the institution that our own representatives poll favorably (barring scandal) among their constituents, while the numbers for the body at large reflect our inherent distrust of “others.”  For that reason, polls like this are not just ridiculous, they are, at best, counterproductive.

Crossposted from They Gave Us a Republic