Well, they're certainly critical. The healthcare reform is a classic example. Its unpopularity is a function of both right and left dissatisfaction. And that can be self-reinforcing. It seems to me that until the Democrats and Obama peeps start touting what they did as a positive, until they remind people that its repeal means a return to the days when a pre-existing condition barred you from insurance, or when you had no chance to buy insurance at all, they will continue to flounder. You cannot run for re-election while running away from the signature legislative achievement of your first term.
Liel Leibovitz, meanwhile, thinks the left's "ontological" inability to understand the nature of successful movements is what is kneecapping the President:
When we march under a banner, when we identify the group’s interests with our own, when we belong to a movement, we do so, often, just because. And by we, alas, I don’t mean liberals. They—we—demand explanations. We’re willing to get behind Obama, but only for short bursts at a time, and only provided that he act in a way we perceive of as befitting the image we have of him, that of our knight and savior. That’s no way to build a movement. When he faces the Republicans, the president knows that his is a battle of one against many … A president is still a politician, and a politician whose voters show up once every four years finds himself, in the remaining 1,459 days, forced to bend before his better-organized, more numerous foes.
The Dish 