Joan's numbers interpretation reflect no considerations of his health care push, with which the same demographic (white voters) most take issue; no consideration of the presidential popularity downturn linked to this part of any President's term; these factors matter more than 'black' as the Other to white voters. The issue of tracking his popularity with white voters as a viable or even crucial approval rating seems a little racially patronizing as well.

Joan, your reference to '... even I was surprised at the extent and the precise timing of the drop in Obama's white support...' is pretty funny, considering my fellow Liberals'/Progressives' 'surprise' at the idiocy, vengeful hatred, twisted lies and brutal talking-point Fox News-Glenn Beck paranoid, racist propaganda that Conservative/Republican/White/Southern/Rural ringleaders have been rallying these 'citizens' around for ages, WAY before Obama's election. The rest of the people in this country who value Democracy had better wake up and smell the Theocratic Fascist crosses burning outside on the East Lawn, because if the only Democrat/Liberal/Progressive/intellectually viable response is 'surprise' and rhetorical disdain, then this country's future as a Democracy is coming to an end sooner than any of us would care to imagine, I'm afraid. Stamping out the Fox News/Birther/Deather/Racist/brain-dead hick jingoist BS with facts, vicious counter-punching in the Media, the voting booth and on the Web is just a start. When all the mainstream news organizations 'interview' any conservative blow-hole who'll come on and bray about 'Obama-Care', et al to no follow-up questions about the efficacy of their sources (no one gets facts from 'Progress For Health Care' [sic], or some other sham name for a PAC or far-right group of wackos with the overthrow of Democracy as their ultimate goal), of their logic, facts, background, sources, let alone disagree strenuously with their tactics, propaganda, racist attitudes, etc.. The list of idiots is FAR longer on the Left, which has lost all effectiveness in countering, containing, and dividing against itself all the a$$clowns on the fringe Right who are running the Conservative Asylum these days. I EXPECT the Republican/Conservative/Nut-Case/Southern/Racist/White/Bloated Political Whore contingent to be just what they are- proto-fascistic scum with their fingers on their rhetorical triggers but no intellectual, moral, ethical or logical ammo. I HOPE that the rest of us will stop living in a political fantasy world of shiny Unicorns and sunny glades in the forest, and remember how Obama won his first 'race'... by researching *every* voter on the list if his opponent, and brutally dismembering so many of their voting eligibility on mostly technical grounds (addresses misspelled, etc.)... the operative theme at work on the Left should start being 'BAMN', or we'll all see what it's like living in Fox's AmerKKKa, and soon. Full discosure- I'm a lifetime member of the NRA, the NAACP, the ASPCA and the ACLU, to name just a few. I'm white, college-educated and come from a long line of agnostic, free-thinking Democrats (with a capital 'D'), and think that the biggest, most pressing threat to these United States is the laughably spineless, ward-healer/Hubert Humphry style of ineffectual, style of Democratic leadership that Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reed practice, NOT Fox News, moron-friendly Republicans like Grassley, etc... the country's ours to lead- only we on the Left can take it away... from ourselves.