Mainstream Democrats Love Obama, Netroots on the Outs

Glenn Greenwald is up in arms again this morning. He's cherry-picking Rasmussen's poll findings on Israel-Gaza, which hold that the public's "divided" over Israel's Gaza attacks. Actually, folks aren't all that divided when you break down the findings, and note this statistic on what political scientists call "attentive publics" (folks who pay attention to news and public affairs):

Sixty-seven percent (67%) of those who say they are following news out of Gaza Very Closely support Israel's military action, while 30% favor diplomacy.

Greenwald's constant meme is how members of both parties completely disregard public opinion in order to shill for Israel.

The guy's a joke, frankly, and it's interesting that today's Gallup's tracking poll on Barack Obama finds near-unanimous support among mainstream Democrats (called "liberals" at the article), while roughly 7 percent of those on the left are apparently unhappy with the direction Obama has taken during the presidential transition:

Gallup Poll Daily tracking finds support for Barack Obama among liberal Democrats holding steady at 93% despite news reports that his core supporters are disappointed with some of his cabinet appointments and other decisions. Meanwhile, in recent weeks, Obama's ratings have improved among conservative Republicans, up from 23% to 29%.

More than 9 in 10 liberal Democrats have expressed confidence that Obama will make a good president since Gallup began tracking these opinions after the election last November. Moderate and conservative Democrats show nearly as high levels of confidence.

Obama's recent decision to have conservative preacher Rick Warren deliver the invocation at the Jan. 20 presidential inauguration and his choices of Republicans Robert Gates and Ray LaHood for cabinet positions have been controversial among members of the political left. Additionally, women's groups have been reported as expressing disappointment that Obama has not selected more women for cabinet-level positions in his administration. But these decisions apparently have not shaken liberal Democrats' confidence in Obama to any perceptible degree, according to aggregated data of thousands of Gallup Poll daily interviews from the immediate post-election period (Nov. 5-30), early December (Dec. 1-17) after he announced many of his cabinet choices, and in recent days (Dec. 18-28) after announcing Warren's role in the inauguration, arguably his most controversial action to date.

The number in the table at the poll for "liberal Democrats" and Obama's "favorable" ratings is 96 percent. It's the nihilist leftists who are most upset about things like Rick Warren and the lack of "diversity" in the cabinet. I'd be surprised if they actually made up the four percent or so who aren't in that figure, although keep in mind that the hard-left forces are extremely vocal and overrepresented on liberal media outlets. They thus make up for their small overall numbers with their outsized personalities and demands, while being enabled by the fawning media attention of a prostrate media cabal.

Notice, by the way, the numbers of "moderate" and "conservative" Republicans who are giving Obama the benefit of the doubt ("a slim majority of moderate and liberal Republicans, 51%, say they are confident Obama will be a good president"). Maybe Obama's "centrism" is paying off with a pre-inaugural bipartisan honeymoon?