After hearing a lot of anti-Obama sentiment from speakers at Netroots Nation I was planning to do a post noting how unrepresentative the NN crowd — mostly male, overwhelmingly white — is from the actual base of the Democratic Party which continues to like Barack Obama a lot:
But according to Christina Bellantoni, the best survey we have actually shows that the Netroots Nation attendees mirror this generous assessment of the president:
A straw poll conducted by Greenberg Quinlan Rosner Research showed that 80 percent either approve or strongly approve of the president more than a year before voters head to the polls to decide whether he deserves a second term. The results broke down to 27 percent strongly approving of Obama and 53 percent approving “somewhat.” Thirteen percent said they “somewhat disapprove,” and 7 percent strongly disapprove of the president.
Nothing earth-shattering. But a reminder that the proximate problem faced by would-be left-wing critics of President Obama is that they generally have much less credibility with the progressive constituency than the president does himself.