So the latest Gallup Poll shows that the public has the worst opinion of Congress in more than three decades — and that the main reason for the latest drop is a plummeting opinion among the nation’s Democrats and independents. As one of those independents, my reaction is, “No kidding, Sherlock,” except that I’m thinking a different word than “kidding.” Still, the numbers are fairly amazing.

“Frustration with Congress spans the political spectrum. There are only minor (but not statistically meaningful) differences in the approval ratings Democrats (21 percent), Republicans (18 percent), and independents (17 percent) give to Congress,” the polling company said in a release.

“Typically, partisans view Congress much more positively when their party is in control of the institution, so the fact that Democrats’ ratings are not materially better than Republicans’ is notable.”

As a matter of fact, Salon magazine’s Glenn Greenwald wrote, the Democrats’ numbers were the sole notable aspect of the survey, because they showed such disgust among the party’s own supporters for the job their leaders have done so far. He attributes this, I believe correctly, to the Democrats’ astonishing failure to lead despite having won both chambers of Congress.

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No one who was paying attention should have expected the Democrats to force major changes in law. With their thin margin in the House, a thinner one in the Senate and a Republican White House, they can get nothing enacted that President Bush doesn’t approve.

But in some key ways, the Democrats have behaved as though the Republicans still control the legislative branch — and their cowardice, on display throughout the first six years of the Bush administration, has never been more evident or craven.

For me, Exhibit A was the new electronic surveillance law amending the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act. By all accounts, it legalized the administration’s warrantless snooping program, with “oversight” that is so limited as to be meaningless. In fact, as we’ve learned from The New York Times, no one is even sure what the law actually permits in the way of new civil liberties encroachments.

It wasn’t surprising, sadly, to see the Republicans vote for this travesty. The GOP has long since abandoned any pretense of believing in civil liberties (notably apart from the right to own guns). But it was grotesque to watch enough Democrats go along to give the imperial White House even more power.

One of those Democrats was California Sen. Dianne Feinstein. She’s always been somewhat chilly toward civil liberties, but occasionally she’s pushed back a little on administration overreaching.

Rather than claiming they’ve preserved checks and balances, Sen. Feinstein and the other Democrats who supported this breathtaking expansion of government surveillance should at least acknowledge what they have done.

When they say that the six-month expiry of the law will lead to changes, they expect us to believe they’ll behave more responsibly at that time. Are they joking? What evidence suggests that they’ll locate their spines by then?

If this was the only such case where the Democrats had reverted to their supine tendencies, that would be one thing. But again and again, the Democrats have ducked and covered when they could have asserted leadership, even — especially — if it would lead to Republican Senate filibusters or presidential vetoes.

The one place where the Democrats are doing better is in oversight. The Republican rubber-stamping and near-absolute refusal to ask serious questions of the executive branch has been a disgraceful abdication of duty, and Democratic investigations are slowly turning up the predictable scandals.

Yet the Democrats are managing to bungle even their oversight function — not, as their opponents would claim, because they’re being too tough on the administration, but rather because they’re not being sufficiently strong.

The scandals surrounding the Justice Department are the most obvious case in point. Members of Congress loudly fret about being stonewalled and misled — if not deliberately lied to, as seems clear enough — by the attorney general and others in the administration.

They issue subpoenas. But when it comes to joining the political combat the administration does so well, Congress reverts. Republicans do what they’re told. Democrats cower.

I don’t buy the idea that voters sent so many Republicans packing last November because they wanted Democrats to take charge in order to essentially do more of the same.

So the current sour views of voters who changed the makeup of Congress make sense to me as a wish for more fighting over serious issues, not more accommodation.

Dan Gillmor is a member of The Examiner’s Board of Bloggers and is founder and director of the Center for Citizen Media at the University of California, Berkeley.