Cross-tab Revelations

One of the many ways that the repug-worshipping Village misrepresents the popularity of liberal policies in this country is by generalizing poll results. Any "disapproval" of President Obama is assumed to be of his supposed leftists tendencies and coming from the right and center.

But now somebody has finally looked at the cross-tab detail and discovered - surprise! - the disapproval is coming from the left, and what they don't like is his dancing to the repug tune on health care reform.

The president's slip isn't entirely the result of frustrated liberals and Democrats, but their aggravation is clearly having an effect. The number of liberals who are confident that Obama will make the right decision, for example, has dropped from 90% to 78%. Liberals who approve of the president's handling of health care has dropped from 81% to 70%.

These almost certainly aren't people expressing disapproval because they're watching Fox News or buying into McCaughey's lies -- these are progressive supporters who disapprove of unhelpful concessions to conservatives and overly-cautious centrists.

SNIP

... if the White House political office wants to see these numbers improve, these poll results offer a pretty big hint. It's not complicated -- take a firm stand in support of the already-articulated principles, stand up to obstructionist Republicans, and tell centrists that the days of slow-walking reform are over.

As the missed-more-every-day Molly Ivins wrote back in 1993 in condemning Clinton's rejection of the liberals who'd elected him: Ya dance with the one that brung ya.

Read the whole thing.