This is why he backed off on talk about social security...the polls were against him. He watches those things constantly.
Obama is very weak right now, though you won't detect that in seeing him on the trash TV shows. He is frantically trying to keep his caucus together and terrified that the Dems are going to split. The reason that the media keeps harping on the splits in the GOP is because they know they will have to fact their own soon and are trying to put it off at least until after the inauguration.
Although I don't know why he would worry about his popularity when anything that adversely affects it is shut down by the bottom feeder leftwing media. He has what amounts to carte blanche.