In case you missed it yesterday, Gallup released its weekly tab on the nation’s approval of Barack Obama. The report wasn’t good news for the president, whose rating still sits at a low 43 percent. The picture looks even bleaker for The One when you draw the details of the poll nearer. The Washington Examiner’s Conn Carroll today calls attention to a nugget buried deep in the report:

Obama’s approval rating has decreased among all six partisan/ideology groups Gallup tracks on a regular basis since January, but it has dropped the most — 10 percentage points, from 40 percent to 30 percent — among pure independents. These are the roughly 14 percent of national adults who neither identify with one of the two major parties nor indicate a leaning. Obama’s approval rating has declined by nearly as much — eight points — among moderate/liberal Republicans, from 29 percent to 21 percent.

Hmm. Given that independents increasingly decide elections, Obummer should pay attention. Perhaps, just perhaps, his strategy to demonize his opponents — and even to make the American people themselves into a kind of enemy, excoriating the electorate as “lazy,” “soft” and “bitter” — isn’t such a sound one, after all. Obama knows he’ll lose the election if it’s a referendum on his record, but that he still stands a sound chance of reelection if he succeeds at making it a contest between him and the GOP. Fortunately, it looks like independents might be paying the best attention of all to Obama’s frequent poor choice of words, not to mention his ill-advised economic policies.