When they do these polls on Congressional popularity they ought to break them down into the popularity of Congressional Democrats vs. the popularity of Congressional Republicans.  It is absurd to compare the overall popularity of a Congress that contains both Democrats and Republicans with the popularity of a Republican President.  

But am I worried this mass unfavorability is going to cause Democrats to lose the majority? Hardly. On the contrary, it looks like it could even help them to build on it.

  Nowhere in his supercilious concerns over "partisan bickering" does he utter a word about the Republicans' perpetual filibustering.

 What a sad, sorry excuse for a political analyst. Too bad we didn't have blogs in 1960 -- we could have smothered his career in the crib.

I think that the returning Congress will have a new edge to it.

Broder:

I think [the Democrats] will suffer the same consequences that the Republicans suffered a year ago. People are fed up with seeing Washington bickering, fighting, in-fighting and never dealing with the issue.

He said the same thing in 1931, so I'm not really worried.

and Congressional approval is low, then I would be very worried.  When Congressional approval ratings are low and the other party controls the White House, it is usually the party that holds the White House that suffers.  When Congressional approval ratings are low and the same party controls the White House, there are usually big electoral problems for that party in the next election.

Examples

1976: when Democrats had Congress but a Republican was in the White House.  Approval ratings for Congress remained in the 20%-28% range for most of the year, but Democrats actually gained a seat in the House in 1976 and stayed even in the Senate.

1982:  Democrats had a majority in the House and Republicans controlled the Senate.  Congressional approval rating was around 29% before the election, yet Democrats picked up 27 seats in the House and Republicans picked up a seat in the Senate.

1990: Democrats had comfortable majorities in both Houses of Congress.  Congressional approval was at 23% before the election, yet Democrats picked up eight seats in the House and one in the Senate.  

1992:  Democrats had comfortable majorities in both Houses.  Congressional approval was at 12% at one point in the year.  Democrats only lost ten seats in the House(entirely due to unfavorable redistricting in Georgia, Alabama, Ohio, and Florida) and held even in the Senate.

1996:  Republicans had won control of Congress by modest margins in 1994.  After the budget shutdown in 1995, the Republican Congress had approval ratings ranging from a low of 16% in May of 1996 to around 33% in the fall.  Republicans only lost eight seats in the House and picked up two in the Senate.  

All of these elections occured when government was divided and voters really did not neccessarily blame either party for the nations problems.

However in years like 1978, 1980, 1994, and 2006 when one party controlled all of government and approval ratings were low, that party lost several seats.

By using history as an example, after averaging all of these election results together, Democrats should pick up about four House seats and one Senate seat in 2008.

We did so well in the last election, and were so anxious to savor our victories (it did feel soooo good didn't it), that we may have caused raised expectations in the general population.

Fact is, we really don't have control of Congress. We have a pretty good majority in the House, but in practice, the blue dogs (who in most districts were the only ones who could get elected during the dark days) can't really be counted on to help us forge major changes.

While we like to think we do, we don't have a majority in the Senate, and the gains we've made are often through moderate Democrats like Webb or McCaskill.