Mister Popularity

Via Ace of Spades, we have Obama's popularity map. The deep blue and deep red represent the states where his popularity are +10 and -10 or more, respectively. The "white" states did not get polled.

Real Clear Politics points out an obvious problem for the Dems:

Almost all of the Bush states are 10 points or more against the President now, while Florida and Ohio are close to -10. The President is underwater in all of the Mountain West states except for New Mexico, and badly so. If we extrapolate to the Congressional level, we can probably assume that in the average swing district, Democratic incumbents are probably running into serious headwinds.

The President's weakness in these states reveals another problem for his party. Since he is weak in Republican areas and swing areas, and yet doesn't have horrible approval ratings overall, he must be very, very popular among his party's base. Some polls have his approval ratings among African Americans at 95%. Even in Massachusetts, Martha Coakley managed to win the First, Seventh and Eighth Districts, which are home to the state's liberals and minorities.

There are less than seven months to election day. The Democrats are hoping that we would have forgotten by then and that the anger has subsided.

I think there's little chance of that. The Tea Party is fired up. The people are engaged in the political process for maybe the first time in their lives. And the health care litigation will be going into full swing around September. If the Democrats decide to go for immigration reform on top of financial reform and cap and trade, the next summer recess will look like a picnic compared to last year's.