OBAMA NOT LEFT ENOUGH? – AT 11:55 A.M. ET:   CNN is reporting that President Obama's approval is down among liberals.  I wonder what their alternative is?  I mean, Dennis Kucinich isn't running...yet:

Washington (CNN) – President Barack Obama's approval rating is down to 45 percent, driven in part by growing dissatisfaction on the left with the president's track record in office, according to a new national survey.
A CNN/ORC International Poll also indicates that the Republican "brand" is taking a beating in the minds of Americans.

The survey's Friday release comes as the Obama administration and top congressional officials continue talks on a potential deal tying roughly $3 trillion in new savings over the next decade to an increase in the nation's debt ceiling. If Congress and the President fail to raise the country's $14.3 trillion limit by August 2, Americans could face rising interest rates, a declining dollar and increasingly jittery financial markets, among other problems.

According to the poll, the president's 45 percent approval rating is down three points from June. Fifty-four percent of people questioned disapprove of how Obama's handling his duties, up six points from last month. His 54 percent disapproval rating ties the all-time high in CNN polling that the president initially reached just before last year's midterm elections.

"But drill down into that number and you'll see signs of a stirring discontent on the left," says CNN Polling Director Keating Holland. "Thirty-eight percent say they disapprove because President Obama has been too liberal, but 13 percent say they disapprove of Obama because he has not been liberal enough - nearly double what it was in May, when the question was last asked, and the first time that number has hit double digits in Obama's presidency."

Looking at that figure another way, roughly one in four Americans who disapprove of the president say they feel that way because he's not been liberal enough.

Obama's approval rating among liberals has dropped to 71 percent, the lowest point in his presidency. And the number of Democrats who want the party to renominate Obama next year, now at 77 percent, is relatively robust by historical standards but is also down a bit since June.

"It's likely that this is a reaction to some of Obama's recent actions, including his willingness to discuss major changes in Social Security and Medicare as part of the debt ceiling negotiations," adds Holland.

COMMENT:  Well, let's look at that.  So 13% of Americans don't think Obama is liberal enough.  What does that tell you about so-called "liberals"?   It really tells you that there's a liberal fringe, which can't muster more than 13%, that has really always been there.  It's concentrated in some parts of big cities, in college towns, and among people who pine for Ralph Nader. 

These folks will have nowhere to go but Obama in the general, but they can also stay home.  That is a legitimate worry for the Obama crowd.  It was stay-at-home Dems who sank Hubert Humphrey's campaign in 1968.  But I don't see the more-liberal-than-Obama faction running America anytime soon.

July 23, 2011