Poll: Despite Obama's Decline, Public Option Support Still Strong

If healthcare reform is in big trouble, why is the public option still popular?
Check out this latest Research 2000 poll (for Daily Kos).
Here's part of what the poll is reporting:

Do you favor or oppose creating a government-administered health insurance option that anyone can purchase to compete with private insurance plans?
Favor Oppose Not Sure
All 58 34 8

Dem 81 12 7
Rep 26 69 5
Ind 57 33 10

Northeast 69 22 9
South 47 46 7
Midwest 61 31 8
West 59 33 8
The public option remains popular, by a nearly 3-2 margin., Seems like people like the idea of competition in the insurance market, that would help lower premiums and keep currently unaccountable insurance companies honest.
What's more, the public option is favored by over a quarter of self-identified Republicans, which is more "bipartisanship" than you'll ever see in DC. And if you look at the regional crosstabs, support for the public option would be even higher if it wasn't for the South, were birtherism and Obama derangement syndrome is at its highest.

And this is the same poll that saw our president's poll take a bit of a tumble. So much for the myth that Democrats are tanking because of "liberalism."
The real reason is the lack of progress on healthcare reform and the reports about the possibility of some watered down version of the same getting passed without any real public option.
And Markos has this warning if real healthcare reform doesn't get done while Democrats pass a watered-down version:

Opposing the public option is electoral poison in every region of the country except the South, while both Democrats and Independents are willing to punish opponents of the public option at the ballot box.
Democrats have a national electoral mandate, they have public opinion on their side, they have dominant majorities in both chambers of Congress, and they have the White House.
No wonder Independents and Democrats are abandoning the Democratic Party.

We hired Barack Obama and a Democratic Congress to get things done, especially on healthcare. We didn't hire them to kowtow with Republicans and other monied interests to jam down our throats a semblance of reform but not the real thing.
We expect results, and anything else will result in severe electoral consquences in both 2010 and 2012.