Why they get away with it

From the Times Union:

The state Senate's nine-day-old political standoff, combined with the federal deficit and New York's top-of-the-charts taxes, seemed like the kind of perfect storm that would draw thousands of angry protesters to Tuesday's "March on Albany," a sequel of sorts to the "Tea Party" protests earlier this spring.

But the turnout -- about 600 people -- was far smaller than a similar April 15 event, which drew 2,500.

And if conversations with several protesters were any indication, most state senators will be handily re-elected in 2010 no matter how many furious editorials or drive-time radio jeremiads the deadlock has provoked.

Most of those who came on Tuesday were at least aware of the state Senate deadlock, but few said they were committed to voting out their own legislators in the 2010 races.

In fact, several protesters couldn't name their local state senators.

The phenomenon in which people dislike the institution but support their own lawmaker is known to political scientists, who say it's most apparent with Congress.

Approval ratings for the House of Representatives as a whole are often in the low 20 percent range, noted Bruce Altschuler, a SUNY Oswego political science professor. At the same time, re-election rates among individual congressional incumbents, according to the Center for Responsive Politics, have run above 90 percent for the past decade.