45/42 favorable ratings. In California.  This is not good news for Democrats, going into the formal 2014 election season: I mean, imagine how Obama’s doing elsewhere.

Mark DiCamillo, director of the Field Poll, said the trend is ominous for Obama, because the latest declines come from his base.

Support among California Democrats dropped 8 percentage points to 68 percent over the last three months. Approval was down 11 points in Los Angeles County and 7 points in the Bay Area, usually liberal strongholds.

“These are constituencies that have been strong followers,” DiCamillo said. But there’s “frustration in the president not getting his way in affecting policy in Washington.”

…and the word I bolded there is interesting. At first I thought that either DiCamillo or the reporter who wrote the article got the word wrong: it should be ‘effecting.’  But then I remembered: when a Democratic President is weak* it’s never his fault.  There are a lot of people out there with a vested interest in pretending that Barack Obama is a mere hapless spectator in the legislative process, mostly because then they don’t have to deal with the actual truth.  Which is, of course, that Barack Obama wants to direct the process; he’s just stunningly incompetent at it**.

Via:

Field Poll: Obama’s popularity dives to record low in even California http://t.co/kyPIhqe2mE

— Raffi Williams (@Raffiwilliams) September 2, 2014

(Image via Shutterstock)

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I almost wrote that as ‘weak at setting policy,’ except that Barack Obama’s problems are considerably more comprehensive.  Indeed, only a basic respect for the office that the man holds keeps me from categorizing Barack Obama as ‘weakling.’

**This is actually easy to reconcile with the President’s extensive golf record.  Barack Obama clearly thinks that the executive authority of President is much like that of a ruling emperor’s: Obama’s job is to broadly set policy, and then the underlings are to scuttle around and do the actual work.  Alas, the man has clearly never studied Byzantine history, or indeed any kind of proper history at all: would-be absolute monarchs tend to have to work long hours.  The kings who get to occupy themselves with supermarket openings and good-will tours do so because they have been explicitly excluded from the decision-making process.

So, basically, if Barack Obama wants to get back to his golf games in peace then he’d better summon his party’s legislators and explain to them that from now on the President will pretty much automatically sign off on everything that Prime Minister Speaker of the House John Boehner proposes. Enough Democratic Senators will happily jump on that bandwagon to make that scenario actually functional.