Democrats in Congress gain victories but not acclaim

Democrats have pulled off one of the most productive sessions of Congress in decades but have yet to win much in the way of approval — even from voters in their own party.

Now, instead of betting on success, party leaders may try the opposite approach — pushing proposals that are almost certain to fail.

As Congress returns to work this week, an idea circulating in Washington is that key blocs of Democratic voters can be fired up for the November elections if the party makes high-profile efforts to debate topics such as immigration and climate change, even if those efforts will probably end in defeat.

Better to stand for core principles, the theory goes, and draw a stark distinction from Republicans.

But many political analysts doubt that strategy will yield big dividends. As Republicans learned in 2006, bringing volatile issues to the fore could do more harm than good as lawmakers in tight reelection campaigns struggle to attract independent voters.

“I don’t think it’s going to help them a lot to take this stuff up,” said Scott Lilly, a former top Democratic congressional aide and now a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress Action Fund. “The guys who have kept the message simple are doing a lot better than the guys who haven’t.”

Historians view these last 18 months on Capitol Hill as among the most productive since Lyndon B. Johnson was president.

Yet Democrats find themselves heading into the fall election facing a significant number of once-supportive voters who either don’t know about or don’t like much of what has come to pass.

Groundbreaking bills establishing equal pay, beefing up tobacco regulation or reining in credit card billing practices gained little apparent interest from an electorate facing job losses and home foreclosures.

Big-ticket legislative items — the economic stimulus package and the healthcare overhaul — remain confusing to many.

Republicans, meanwhile, have found political success in erecting a wall of opposition. They have posed a disciplined attack on the Democratic agenda, criticizing the legislative victories as government overreach that will cost future generations by running up the national debt.

“Americans are fed up with how things are going in the country right now,” said Rep. Phil Gingrey of Georgia in the Republican’s weekly address Saturday. “They feel let down by a government that passes one 2,000-page, trillion-dollar law after another instead of focusing on addressing the problems Americans worry about every day.”

Democrats have another opportunity in the weeks ahead to use the legislative agenda to recapture voters.

Many Democrats wish to amplify the divide between the parties by portraying themselves as the party of Main Street through jobless benefits and economic aid, and by characterizing Republicans as beholden to Wall Street.

Rep. Chris Van Hollen of Maryland, chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, said Congress should focus on passing bills to provide small-business tax incentives and other investments to stimulate the economy.

“Our guys are going to focus on the economy and jobs,” Van Hollen said. “The top priority is to maintain the recovery. We’re not out of the ditch yet.”

Yet President Obama has seized on the public interest in the BP oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico and the strict anti-illegal immigration law in Arizona to reignite debate on energy and immigration.

Neither of those issues has good odds of passing in Congress; such bills have failed to advance in recent years, when the political climate was markedly less partisan than today.

Despite the unlikely chance for success, both issues have suddenly been hoisted onto the congressional calendar.

Many Latino voters have been frustrated by what they believe is the Obama administration’s slow pace on an immigration overhaul. Democrats want to re-engage these voters, especially in California, Nevada and other states where a robust Latino presence could tip tight elections.

Simply raising the prospect of legislation that could provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants could help drive Latino voters to Democrats. Such a debate would highlight the contrast with Republicans, who hew more closely to tougher immigration enforcement, in some cases supporting the Arizona law, strategists say.

An energy bill may be less divisive, especially if it is portrayed as a jobs initiative that invests in the increasingly popular renewable energy sector.

“There’s no question jobs is the premier issue before voters now, but there’s no question energy fits under the jobs rubric,” said Mark Mellman, a Democratic strategist. “Clean energy is a jobs issue for most Americans.”

Though an energy debate could stir Democratic voters by focusing on an Obama priority, it also risks backlash from Republican opponents who deride proposals to cap carbon emissions as a “light-switch tax” on household utility bills.

In many ways, Democrats are taking a page from the Republican political playbook of 2006, another summer when the political prognosis was bleak for the party in power.

But Republicans, fighting for their political lives, launched a legislative agenda to motivate their core voters with bills against flag-burning, same-sex marriage and Internet gambling.

That year, the so-called American Values Agenda offered a last gasp before the electoral wave wiped out the Republican majority.

lisa.mascaro@latimes.com