Obama's popularity is slipping and the reason is simple: he's not being a Democratic leader

I've noticed since January that the president's approval ratings have been slipping. They were in actually net positive territory for a while after the first of the year, but are now down to (mixed poll averages) something on the order of 49-45 disapproval. 

I can't prove this scientifically, but I am convinced the reason for this is the president's anemic support for working people in the Wisconsin Wave and his over-readiness to cave in to Republicans in their demands, based on their promulgation of the Great Fiscal Myth, to cut, specifically, only certain kinds of spending, which almost invariably harms lower middle class, working people, and the poor (including the long term unemployed) the hardest. Earth to President Obama: these are your constituents. You know, the folks who got you elected.

President Obama needs to change course and start supporting a progressive agenda immediately, or he could actually lose in '12, when all the signs are indicating that the reactionary reversal in '10 has already played out and the opportunity for a major restoration of Democratic power in '12 is emerging. But the president needs to lead, not oppose, the new awakening on the part of millions of working people and others in the less privileged classes that it is the Rightists, not the left, who is waging class warfare, and that the war is against them. Why the president doesn't seem to get this I can't figure out, in all truth.

I also fear that the Libyan military incursion could well backfire, and that the president's popularity will suffer as a result. And if that happens, there's no way around it: it will have been self-inflicted.