Why is California President Obama’s political safe haven?

If Barack Obama were a state, Former Golden State First Lady Maria Shriver once said of the president, he would be California.

Never has that been truer perhaps than in this, the mid-term election campaign in President Obama’s second term, when he may be the most beloved politician in California while shunned in almost ever other state in the country.

The Obamas have bought a home in Southern California where they plan to live after he leaves office. There’s talk his presidential library may be built near his undergraduate alma mater, Occidental College in suburban Los Angeles.

He is the darling of Hollywood, raising money for Democratic candidates nationally as if it were for a Spielberg blockbuster. Some have even suggested that after his presidency, he would be an ideal head for a modern-day Tinseltown studio needing the visionary voice of America’s most charismatic politician of our generation.

Obama’s frequent visits to California are more like love fests even though they often back up traffic for hours.

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“It’s great to be back in L.A. I look around this crowd and I see folks who have been there from Day 1, people who supported me even before most folks could pronounce my name,” Obama told about supporters last week in his most recent swing into Los Angeles.

So it confounds those California crowds, often filled with big name actors and celebrities, who can’t understand why in this mid-term campaign frenzy Democratic candidates running for re-election in other states can’t wait to distance themselves from what they still see as the magnetic magic of Barack Obama.

Yet though those Democrats trying to hold off Republican challengers don’t necessarily want to appear alongside the president, they are more than eager to take the money he raises for their campaign war chests.

“No, he can’t walk on water,” one veteran California-based Democratic strategist was quoted recently. “But he’s raised more money than any political figure in the history of the world.

“If that’s the role he has to play now, so be it. The majority of people here still see him as far better than the Republican alternative.”

And still, Obama has now even begun taking hard hits from some influential California Democrats who once worked for him.

The most prominent of those critics is Leon Panetta, the onetime California congressman who was secretary of defense and director of the Central Intelligence Agency under Obama.

“These last two years I think (Obama) kind of lost his way. You know, it’s been a mixed message, a little ambivalence in trying to approach these issues and try to clarify what the role of this country is all about,” Panetta writes in his new best-selling memoir that is highly critical of the president and his leadership.

SEE ALSO: Obama’s approval rating among Hispanics drops significantly

“There’s a little question mark too, is the United States going to stick this out? Is the United States going to be there when we need them?”

As it turns out, although he continues to thrive in California, his popularity has fallen even in what has long been his safe haven.

“In California, the recent decline is greatest among the voter segments that were his strongest supporters in the last two elections,” says Mark DiCamillo, director of the California Field Poll, whose recent survey found that Obama’s biggest slack in support came was in the urban areas of Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“There was growing impatience with the president following through on his agenda. People were expecting quite a bit. That has tempered. They aren’t seeing results.”

The California Field Poll reports that while 45 percent of the state approved of Obama’s job performance – higher than his national job rating —  the figure represents the first time the president had fallen below a 50 percent approval rating in three years.

“The problem is he’s less popular than he used to be all over the country,” says Stanford University professor Terry Moe. “He’s taken a lot of hits. Now is not a good time for him.”

Of course, you would never convince his most ardent supporters in Hollywood and the Silicon Valley to whom the president still represents the allure and mystique of the California Dream.