We saw the long, slow decline of President Obama's approval numbers during the excruciating process of passing Obamacare. Now McClatchy has a poll that shows the president with his lowest approval numbers yet, largely due to a drop in support from his base:

"He's having the worst of both worlds right now," said Lee Miringoff, the director of the Marist Institute for Public Opinion at Marist College in New York, which conducted the national survey.

"As he moves to the center, he's not picking up support among independents and he's having some fall-off among his base. If his strategy is to gain independents and keep the Democrats in tow, it isn't working so far."

The poll was taken from Dec. 2 through Wednesday, as the president proposed a two-year freeze on federal civilian workers' pay and cut a deal with congressional Republicans to extend expiring tax cuts - even those for the wealthy, which he'd opposed.

Overall, just 42 percent of registered voters approve of how he's doing his job, while 50 percent disapprove.

Obama's standing among Democrats dropped from a month ago, with his approval rating falling to 74 percent from 83 percent, and his disapproval rating almost doubling, from 11 percent to 21 percent.

Among liberals, his approval rating dropped from 78 percent to 69 percent and his disapproval rating jumped from 14 percent to 22 percent.

His position among independents remained virtually the same, with 39 percent approving and 52 percent disapproving. A month ago, it was 38-54.

The president's continued failure to rally independents could ruin his bid for re-election. A hypothetical 2012 matchup showed him getting the support of 44 percent of registered voters and Romney, a former Massachusetts governor, getting 46 percent.

Obama still gets a 62% positive rating for his performance from non-white Americans (no breakdown for African Americans) which means his numbers are in the low to mid-30's with whites. He is doing absolutely nothing that would give any group the idea that he knows what to do next or that even if he does, he can accomplish it.

Americans are in the process of dismissing this man and unless there is some international crisis that would cause people to rally around the president as they did with Jimmy Carter during the Iran hostage crisis, it seems improbable that the president can raise those numbers very much prior to the 2012 election.

Hat Tip: Ed Lasky