Obama is no longer wildly popular - he's largely squandered that - but he's not unpopular either. His positives outweigh his negatives consistently and he polls better even at this point in his term than most presidents of recent memory. He just isn't (or hasn't with a few exceptions such as Rahm) willing to deploy that for dirty local politics.

And if you're claiming that Obama's people can't locate key fundraisers in the other camp who may be convinced - as Cuomo did - then you're saying his people suck at opposition research. Which I also disbelieve