I don't think the drop has anything to do with queers. The public are focused on other issues now.

Obama's first and worst mistake was backing away from the fiscally responsible, targetted stimulus of Clintonomics, which he promised, and giving us this Keynesian blubber fest instead. By expanding the debt, he thus showered the repubs with political capital at a time when we need every scrap to put in healthcare.

But all the blame doesn't go to the Pres. The democratic base let him do it. They probably didn't remember that major promise, just like they barely noticed the Clintons' successes.

It's the same story. The public are hopeless dingbats lead around by the sleazoid pundits of commercial media.

That aside, we could turn it around on healthcare if liberal money would kick in for an ad campaign to counter repub lies. Chances are they won't.

Alex, it appears to me that you are looking for a conclusion without sufficient data. Beyond that, you can speculate this and speculate that, but as far as coming up with anything valid, we might as well be arguing about how many angels can dance on the head of a pin.

If we want to know what portion of the popularity drop is due to disappointment/frustration among LGBT voters, then we need a polling survey, or at least a few good questions included within a larger survey, designed to detect that specific effect.

And the fact that there is no polling group out there conducting such a survey or asking any such questions (yet) --- that fact alone tells us something: there may be a bit of talk in the mainstream about LGBT disaffection, but no one considers it important enough to study. In other words, we are occasionally good fodder for dead airspace yada-yada-pundit-yak, but otherwise we are hardly on anyone's radar screen. Maybe not even inside the White House.

I am not 100% happy with President Obama. That said, hell will freeze over before I will ever vote for a Republican. And I wonder how people would respond to a poll if they were asked if they wished they had voted for McCain/Palin instead of Obama/Biden. I don't think people are happy (mostly because of the economy which can't be fixed fast enough) but I don't think they would now prefer to have John McCain as president. Obama's poll fluctuations don't indicate that Democrats are suddenly becoming right-wing Republicans.

It's hard for me to be too mad at the moment--we're still less than a year in, and at least there's been some signs of things getting taken care of. 100% happy? No, but I've not been particularly angered yet.

Yup, my bet's on the elderly as well. They're a rather fickle crowd, especially with death panel lies and financial scare tactics.

My bet is not on the elderly, but on people who have memories...And since our editor used the word first, Who the FUCK are either of you to stereotype "elderly" persons? And where does elderly begin in your pea sized minds? Please also cite any source other than your prejudice.

Firstly, take a moment and celebrate the life of Ted Kennedy who had worked for universal health care since 1980. Now, think about how easy it must be to obtain. None of this is easy, and all of you are spoiled.

OBAMA'S DROP HAS TO DO WITH INCREASING UNEMPLOYMENT. Period, done, end, nothing else we are not even a pimple on his popularity rating.

(Or as Prime minister Benjamin Disraeli said to young Queen Victoria: "I regret to say your majesty that my government will be voted out of office next Fall. There has been a drought and the electorate will not countenance a man who cannot control the weather")

That Blaze is Parallel Reasoning...as opposed to picking an item and putting "for dummies" after it.

If Obama is going to run on the edges and govern from the middle he is hardly the first of either party. Already he is strengthening his "defense" portfolio to my personal dismay, but who notices that when "American Idol" takes everyone"s time?

Congress is so unpopular with the electorate that there are doubtless many Democrats secretly hoping for a curb to the prospect of super executive branch. You see we just had seven years of that and no one liked it. Congress can be miracle workers at obfuscation when they put their collective minds to it.

Politics remain as politics have been.

Even if you could quantify it Alex, it would be split along racial lines.

It's a fact that the gay people pissed at Obama and that have been even BEFORE he took office have been predominately white.

If you poll Black or Latino/a gays, there will probably be a diametrically opposed reaction to the one of white gay people and they would cancel each other out.

Speculation about Obama's drop in the polls is often just wishful thinking, like Alex’s plaintive ending, “Which should make it easy for him to pick up a few points if he really wants them” by abandoning his homohating bigotry. Fat chance.

The fact is that Obama's slide in the polls is based on the fact that he's a centrist at a time when the public are breaking sharply to the right and the left. In times like these people dismiss fence sitters.

He won't end the mass murder in Afghanistan and Iraq where the US and its puppet regimes are murdering civilians in increasingly large numbers. He won’t end kidnapping, torture and murder but he is ‘reassigning’ it because the CIA, as usual, is tainted with blood.

He continues to write welfare checks for predatory lenders and looter capitalists while unemployment and crippling deficits grow and grow.

His frosty attitude of benign neglect for the GLBT communities, minority communities and labor has turned to open hostility and contempt.

He’s trying to bust the UAW.

He no crash program for long term unemployment insurance, housing, university education or medical care for minority and other workers, and has no plans for trillions in grants to states to provide welfare on a scale not needed since the last depression.

In terms of the GLBT communities his homohating is getting worse and all the medals, good intentions and Easter Egg hunts in the world can’t hid that.

In the face of a few rightists bullies organized by Rupert Murdoch Obama is in head-over-heels, cowardly, tail between his legs retreat on health care. He refuses to tie himself down to specifics because he met with PhRMA President and CEO Billy Tauzin 4 times, with Karen Ignagni, president and chief executive officer of America's Health Insurance Plans 4 times, with Richard Umbdenstock, President and CEO of the American Hospital Association 7 times and with the AMAs President Dr. James Rohack 3 times.

Obama, mimicking Cheney and Bush, refuses to comment on what he gave away and what he got paid for it. http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2009/07/22/obamas-private-health-car_n_243115.html

Obama's latest and most revolting sell-out is his openly racist decision to deny health care to immigrant and imported workers which puts everyone at risk. Denying health care to such a huge segment of the working population is a disaster waiting to happen. Infectious diseases are notoriously apolitical and opportunistic. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4qm4uLCFrP0&eurl%2F%2F

Until recently I thought the idea of a one term Obama presidency unlikely. Now I’m not so sure.

Alex's statement that "I doubt it has much to do with unemployment. Yeah, it's going up, but who's blaming Obama for it?’ isn’t reality based.

Many blame him now for giving money to the looter rich and none to states for unemployment. When unemployment benefits run out for millions that will change to a period of despair followed by rage, repeating events from 1929 until the year of the general strikes, 1933.

"Illegal", as used to describe imported and immigrant workers has become a racist term. Immigrant and imported workers are not scabs. The opposite is true. According to the AFL-CIO union membership of immigrant and imported workers has risen 30% in the last decade and continues to climb in mining, meat packing and the hotel and restaurant trade. Most of the growth and much of the renewed militancy of the union movement flows from the recruitment of immigrant and imported workers by the UCFW, SEIU, HERE, Teamsters and the UMW.

http://blog.aflcio.org/2007/08/30/immigrant-union-membership-grew-30-percent-in-last-decade/

Because of the rancid racism of Obama's denial of health care to this huge sector of the workforce, his polling numbers among immigrants and the Latino/a community are guaranteed to slip. Those communities learned early on that Bush, for all his lies, was betraying them and they'll draw the same lessons about Obama’s racism that we’ve drawn about his homohating bigotry and that African Americans, among others, will draw from his 'benign neglect' and austerity programs for working class communities.

Obama, like Clinton and Bush before him, is an unmitigated disaster for working people.

And as ususal Bill, you have the same flaw in your logic as many of his critics.

The man has only been in office seven months. That's not enough time to make sweeping generalizations as to what type of president he is going to be.

I think that our hopes for this presidency are being smashed because the template for success on all issues was dismissed.

The template for broad success of Obama's Term was to Bluntly, and at high immediate cost, put an end to the housing crisis. This would involve major bank losses, broad principle reductions for anybody underwater, easy refi for all, including those that would no longer qualify for a loan on their home, and a huge taxpayer kick-in.

This is and was the only way to stop the economic bleeding, bottom out the housing market, and start the unemployment figures to start going lower.

Obama needed to begin on this platform, no matter what was said to his voters prior to the election. Within a year of making these sweeping changes that would affect most every American directly or peripherally, Obama would have been seen by most as an American HERO, let alone a competent President.

Once this much goodwill was established with the people, Obama's other agenda items would have by and large all been slam dunks, including many LGB issues.

Instead Obama has taken his checklist and tossed the issues into a hat, pulling them out seemingly at random. Ha has also burned alot of his Honeymoon collateral by making TV show and magazine cover appearance ad nauseam. This while the rest of the country is battling a deep recession, and wondering why he isn't more focused and helping us with our urgent needs.

In my opinion Obama has pissed away the biggest opportunity of the Century, and likely caused a setback to his Party and his Race that will linger for much longer than it should.

There is still time for Obama to right his ship. He's less than a year in, and could get back on track now. I fear though that Obama has a much different view of how he should go forward, and his path will continue to take him down a road of deterioration for both his popularity and the Country's well being. I am sorrowed.