Approval Of Congress: 21%

Approval of Congress is down to 21% (Glenn Reynolds jokes "there are 21% WHO APPROVE?").

As a partisan activist, I don't pay attention to the Republican or Democratic numbers in these polls. Republicans heavily disapprove of a Democratic Congress; Democrats are angry about inaction on Democratic priorities.

It's the independents that draw my interest. They bring about change at the ballot box. The approval rating for Congress among indys is 16%, down from 23% from last month.

How to appeal to these voters? Glenn Greenwald at Salon.com says look to the tea party movement. Greenwald looks past the accusations of Obama-hatin' and racism to see a movement that defies conventional political definition.

...they're the by-product of a completely different dichotomy that is growing in importance: between system insiders and their admirers (those who believe our national political establishment and its elites are basically sound and good) and system outsiders (those whose anger is confined not to one of the two political parties but who instead believe that the political culture itself is fundamentally corrupted and destructive). There are people typically identified as members of either the conventional Right or Left who are, in fact, more accurately described as being in this latter group: those disenchanted with the political culture itself. Anger over the Wall Street bailout and corporate excesses was one example where that trans-partisan disenchantment was evident.

Greenwald says that Republicans are having trouble cashing in on this movement because many GOPers are just now being "born again" to the limited government movement. If the Republican party expands governmental reach while it is in power (just in different ways than Democrats), a frustrated amalgamation of right and left wingers form a completely separate "leave me and my money alone" coalition.

It's hard to see...given the partisan natures of our primary contests...how candidates are going to emerge from either party that will win the support of this constituency.