Congressional majorities in Washington

Last time around, it took the Democratic congressional majority in Washington about 40 years (from the 1954 elections to the 1995 elections) to alienate the electorate with their greed, sleaze, and ineffectiveness and get thrown out of power. The Republicans must work harder, because this time around it only took them 11 years (from the Gingrich revolution in 1995 to the 2006 elections) to lose the support of a majority of the electorate.

Now the Democrats have won a slight majority in each house, and have an opportunity to show that they are better stewards of the country than the Republicans have been. So with all the really critical issues that face us, from global warming to the impending implosion of the Social Security and Medicare system, what do they focus on first? New ethics rules which they are already circumventing and a staged debate on the Iraq war (the CSPAN camera is fixed on the speaker, so the public can't see that the chamber is almost empty while the speakers read their speeches into the record), scoring cheap points for the next election. Early evidence suggests the Democrats may now be trying to beat the Republican record for how short a time it takes to alienate the electorate.