Netroots Nation Gives Obama 80% Support

Going into the 2008 election Barack Obama had the support of nearly all of the progressives in this country -- even most of those who had supported Hillary Clinton in the primaries. After the horrible years under George Bush, they were ready for a change -- a return to progressive values and policy.

But since then a lot of those progressives, including me, have been very disappointed. The president has been far more interested in bipartisanship with the party of NO than he has been in pushing progressive initiatives. The wars are still raging in both Iraq and Afghanistan, where together more than 150,000 troops are still in harm's way. Virtually nothing has been done to kickstart the economy and get some healthy job creation going. The health care plan that was passed looked far more like a Republican program (RomneyCare) than a progressive one (and a public option was never seriously considered). And very little has been done to rein in Wall Street greed.

Obama seems to have staked out a picture in the middle and is taking his progressive base for granted. It's as though he believes they have no choice except to support him in the 2012 election. Maybe he's right, because the alternative is pretty unpalatable.

This last week many of the nation's top progressive bloggers met at Netroots Nation in their yearly confab (alas, yours truly was too broke to attend). Anyway, Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research decided to take the opportunity to take the pulse of progressives by doing a straw poll of those attending the event. They asked the bloggers if they still supported President Obama. Here's what they said:

Strongly approve...............27%
Somewhat approve...............53%
Somewhat disapprove...............13%
Strongly disapprove...............7%

Roll Call took this as a good sign for the president, and their headline said, "Netroots Straw Poll Shows Obama Still Strong". I guess that's one way of looking at it. He did get 80% approval, even though 53% of that support was rather tepid (but this 53% will no doubt support him in the upcoming election).

I read this poll a little differently. I saw it as he has lost 20% of his support, and I wonder if he can really afford that -- even against the weak opposition the Republicans seem to want to send against him in 2012.

There is no chance of the president having any real opposition in the primaries. He has the nomination locked up (and even the 20% realize that). President Obama will be the Democratic nominee in 2012. But the primaries aren't the problem. It's the Fall election where the president can't afford to lose the support of that 20%.

I know the president and his handlers think this 20% will come home for the general election. He may be wrong. These are not die-hard Democrats. They are progressives first and foremost, and they are tired of being disappointed by the Democrats. And many of these people have voted for a third-party candidate in the past (remember Ralph Nader?). They won't be afraid to do it again.

The president may think these progressives have nowhere to go and will have to vote for him. He's wrong if he thinks that. There's always somewhere else to go -- even if it's just to make a point or stage a protest.

I hope the president realizes he's got some fence-mending to do, because getting only 80% of progressives just might not be good enough.