Today’s Washington Post poll also gets at an issue I’ve been trying to raise relative to the tea party phenomenon. Is it actually the case that there’s some large group of people who are newly outraged by Barack Obama’s conduct in office, or are the people who don’t like Obama today basically just the same people who didn’t like him a year ago. One question the Post asked was: “Would you say Obama is doing a better job as president than you expected, a worse job, or what? Is that much better/worse or somewhat better/worse?”
The results:
Basically no tidal wave of disappointment with Obama here. More people claim to be pleasantly surprised by his presidenting than say he’s done worse than they thought. And of course many of the disappointed will be progressives who blame him for not being more effective at pushing progressive policy through.