Denis Staunton AmericaThe steady stream of bad news for the White House - from the Jack Abramoff lobbying scandal to the trials of former Republican leader Tom DeLay and Dick Cheney's former chief of staff Scooter Libby - is finally paying dividends for Democrats in the polls.
A Pew Research Center poll found this week that one in three voters think of their vote in November's mid-term congressional elections as a vote against President Bush. Half of those questioned said they would vote for the Democrat in their district, compared to just 41 per cent who would vote for a Republican.
Two other polls this week gave Democrats a similar lead and the Pew study found the party ahead with voters on 10 out of 12 key issues, with Republicans seen as more competent only on "reducing crime" and "dealing with the terrorist threat at home".
This good news has done little to cheer up Democratic politicians and activists, however, most of whom believe the party has no better than an even chance of regaining control of the Senate or the House of Representatives in November.
To win majorities, the Democrats will have to pick up six extra seats in the Senate and 15 in the House, a task made more difficult by the fact that most constituency boundaries favour incumbents.
Some Democrats believe the party's difficulties go beyond the electoral system, however, arguing that Republicans continue to set the political agenda, with the opposition party still smarting from its defeat in the 2004 presidential election.
Under party chairman Howard Dean, the Democrats have sought to build a stronger grassroots organisation outside Washington, refusing to compromise on core values. Dean and his allies believe that their strategy is helping to shore up support among the party faithful while protecting the party from charges that it stands for nothing but opposition to the president.
In a new book called Take It Back - Our Party, Our Country, Our Future, former Clinton strategists James Carville and Paul Begala argue that Democrats must change the way they talk about politics if they are to appeal to the broad mass of American voters. Carville and Begala, who were frozen out of John Kerry's presidential campaign, avoid direct criticism of the current Democratic leadership but their prescription for success is in direct conflict with the Dean strategy.
The book calls on Democrats to abandon their campaign for tougher gun laws, to accept a ban on late-term or "partial birth" abortion and a new law demanding parental consent for minors seeking an abortion and to give up on gay marriage and on overturning the "don't ask, don't tell" rule for gays in the armed forces.
Such policy changes could help Democrats to woo working class and rural voters who are conservative on social issues but they would alienate many of the activists the party needs to bring out the vote in November.
Democrats will be disappointed if they fail to win a majority in the House or the Senate this year but veteran political analyst Charlie Cook warned this week that success in November could be more costly than failure.
Writing in the National Journal, he pointed out that, even under the most optimistic forecasts, the Democrats can hope to win only the most slender majorities - of one or two seats in the Senate and perhaps five in the House. These successes would give the Democrats the power to investigate and subpoena but little else.
"The worst situation for any party in a legislative chamber is to have the responsibility to govern without the power to do so. If Democrats gain a majority in each chamber, they'll find themselves sharing blame with President Bush," Cook writes.
He suggests that, if the Democrats gain control of one of the chambers, some of the air will seep from the "time for a change" balloon the party needs to carry it to victory in 2008, when the White House, one third of Senate seats and the entire House are up for grabs.
"The chances of Democrats coming out on top in the 2008 races for real control of the Senate, the House, and the White House will be better if, in the interim, Democrats have not diluted the voters' desire for change by sharing responsibility for governing.
"So while we ought to expect the Democrats to go full tilt in this year's elections, if they make gains but come up just short in both chambers, they may lay the groundwork for a much bigger and more consequential triumph in 2008," he said.