But the thing is, many say they disagree with the premise, but support it anyway "for Obama." This is a big problem with the Democrats and Republicans.
Yes and no. At some level your leaders have to demonstrate leadership. And leadership as a concept is worthless until you have to influence people to do things that they normally might not agree with at first. Social inertia is immense. Government inertia is even more immense.
For example, how bad does our dysfunctional health care insurance system need to get before someone risks upsetting the status quo for the chance to improve it ... even if risk of change means it might result in failure ? It's too lazy and easy to do nothing and maintain the inertia, and people get uncomfortable when there are changes to their lives -- especially to things they generally need and depend on.
That said, that doesn't mean you shouldn't engage your brain. Even so, I sign Internet petitions all the time because they are a worthless joke. The more ridiculous the petition, the better. In those cases, it's the annoying people who are clueless about how government works who issue these petitions are the ones I am humoring. A little of that could be at play here too.