In recent days,  honorary members of the partisan Left have not only argued that bipartisanship is undesirable because it leads to compromised policy choices; they have also tried to make the point that bipartisanship is politically useless to Obama, that Americans will not like him any better for maintaining a bipartisan stance.

Mark Blumenthal of pollster.com proves the partisans wrong:

[E]vidence of the limits of bipartisanship? Let’s remember that Obama holds an overall approval rating that most polls now peg in the mid-sixty percent range, after winning with roughly 52.9% of the votes cast. Doesn’t the aggregate approval rating, including approval from roughly a third of Republicans, say something about the benefits of the “bipartisan” messaging? And how will those Republican and Republican leaning independents respond to harsher partisan rhetoric from the President?

Moreover, to the extent that Obama’s ratings declined, both Gallup and Rasmussen — the only two measuring his job approval on a daily basis — show that decline occurring by the end of inauguration week, well before Republicans ramped up their criticism of the stimulus bill. So as evidence of a reaction to the stimulus debate, these data fall short.

If there is a lesson in this particular decline in approval ratings, it has little to do with the stimulus plan. I’m not sure I see a lesson here, unless Obama can find a way to hold an inauguration every week.

You can still believe in bipartisanship. The evidence on which these leftist hyper-partisans base their advice? Not so much.