Or, put differently: On policy, the Republicans will end up either about where they were when they started this fight, or worse off. Politically, they’ll be in a far weaker place, having seen their public support collapse. Along both dimensions, they are faring worse than they did even in 1995-6, when Bill Clinton accepted some of theirkey demands, and when their approval ratings didn’t sink as low as the latest pollssuggest they’re sinking now.

How has it come to this? After all, there were reasons to think Republicans would be in a stronger position today than in the mid-‘90s. As my colleague Nate Cohn and other stats connoisseurs have pointed out, the public is more polarized along ideological lines than it was back then. That means a party can do its level best to piss off the entire country—and the GOP has really thrown itself into the challenge—and still retain the support of 45 percent of voters.

Likewise, most Republican House members represent such conservative districts—the average House district is 11 points more Republican than the rest of the country—that they can simply disregard national poll numbers. (This is often what people mean when they invoke “gerrymandering,” though the term is inapt, as Nate points out.)

I like the list of things Congress is less popular than:

Meanwhile, a PPP poll has indicated that a series of unpleasant and obnoxious other things are more popular than Congress.

Those things include (and I’m not making this up):

Hemorrhoids

Witches

The IRS

Jury Duty

Cockroaches

Dog Poop

Toenail Fungus

Mother-in-Law

Potholes

Public Radio Fundraising Drives

Zombies

Fortunately for the legislative branch, it’s apparently more popular than Charles Manson, Twerking, the Ebola virus and Vladimir Putin.

Poor Miley Cyrus better put the twerking away lest she be less popular than Congress.

Btw Nate Silver had a great article last week on the Six Big Takeaways from the Government Shutdown:

http://www.grantland.com/fivethirtyeight/story/_/id/9802433/nate-silver-us-government-shutdown

Gotta love Nate!