Don't -- do not -- underestimate Joe Biden.
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Obama's presidency may be imploding. Nate Silver reports that his acceptability ratings are dropping among Democrats.
As he endures criticism from his left over his handling of the tax policy debate with Republicans, his approval rating has declined among liberals, according to the poll: 69 percent of them now approve of his job performance as compared with 78 percent in November. Likewise, his approval rating has declined among Democrats: to 74 percent from 83 percent. However, there has been no comparable improvement in Mr. Obama’s standing among independents.
It's his taking liberal support for granted that irks his supporters as much as anything.
One theory of mine is that Mr. Obama — if one assumes that he is a liberal himself — sees less need to hedge his words when speaking to other liberals, in the same way that most of us tend to speak more bluntly to friends and family members than to relative strangers. But liberals — just like moderates and conservatives — formulate their impressions of the president based on a combination of intellectual and emotional factors, and their view of politics may not be so emotionally detached as Mr. Obama’s sometimes seems to be. And few voters of any kind would be pleased if it feels as though their support is being taken for granted.
Where I differ from Silver is in this: Obama is not the liberal many of his supporters are. It's one of the reasons many of us supported him. Not because we're not liberals but because liberals are not all of the same generation and culture. Not all liberals are knee-jerks, not all look-alikes. Until the Democratic party comes to terms with this, many of us will remain outside the party of which we were life-long members. Many of us are well to the left of "boomer" liberals. Some are probably more centrist. Some more independent or libertarian.
I'd love to see Nate Silver take on this issue: just where the fault lines lie within the left. One thing is certain: many of us are to the left of Barack Obama politically but, like him, are far more tolerant of cultural variations than many boomer generation liberals.
