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You could argue that as a voting populace, we're getting wiser.

I mean, the Democrats held Congress for 60-plus years and invented basically every socialist program that present presidential candidates are vowing to fix today.

So, when voters tossed out the Republican-led Congress after only 12 years, well, we might be able to draw the conclusion that voters are now more knowledgeable.

Of course, a case could also be made the people are more easily hoodwinked today. After all, in the last election Democrats managed to persuade voters that, among other things, Democrats: had no hand in landing us in Iraq; would bring real openness and integrity to Congress - never acknowledging that a major factor in their 1994 defeat was their own rank corruption; and, of course, would be fiscally, er, conservative.

Now, after only eight months, voters are more fed up with Congress - read, "the Congressional leadership" - than they are with President Bush. Not an easy thing to accomplish.

At RealClearPolitics, a conservative Web site that is a clearinghouse for poll numbers, the president's approval rating is a slightly under 32 percent. And that's with a "lift," according to a Wall Street Journal poll, from the positive results of the troop increase in Iraq.

However, this is outdone, if it can be called that, by the continued slide of the Democrats' numbers in Congress. Slightly more than two in 10 voters - 21.7 percent - think House and Senate lawmakers are doing a swell job.

Republicans in Washington, who no doubt understand the fine line Democratic leaders are trying to walk, are smiling right now. The Democrats have become financially dependent - and to some extent message-dependent - on groups like MoveOn.org, Campaign for America's Future, the American Civil Liberties Union, the Center for American Progress and other smaller but still highly influential organizations, such as Code Pink for Peace.

These groups lie far to the left of the Democrats' larger constituencies, yet when they demand attention, they get it, generally with a message that sounds a lot like: Cut and run in Iraq.

Only a handful of Capitol Hill Democrats, one imagines, jumped for joy last week when MoveOn.org took out a full-page ad in the New York Times to attack Gen. David Petraeus.

However, the ad did bring Democratic leadership to its knees. During the general's report on progress in Iraq, Democrats were forced to pounce on him and quickly dismiss him and his opinion.

Presidential candidate Sen. Barack Obama, an Illinois Democrat, reportedly worked on a speech throughout the hearing. When it came time for him to ask Petraeus the hard questions, Obama chose instead to rant about President Bush's mishandling of the war. Obama probably scored points with the anti-war left but blew another opportunity to look presidential.

Right now, the Republicans' best political strategy is to pray Democratic leaders will face the nation more often. So far, their prayers are being answered.