Axelrod: Left will 'fully engage' with Obama in 2012

The liberal base will give its full support to President Obama in 2012 despite its frustration over the lack of progress on certain key issues, former White House senior adviser David Axelrod said Monday.

Axelrod — who will serve as a top aide to Obama's reelection campaign — acknowledged that "people can be hardest on their friends," but said that the Obama campaign has already received a "tremendous" volunteer response. He added that the choice between Obama and the Republican candidate will "galvanize" voters around the president.

"I don't, in any way, doubt that there are those who don't feel like progress has been made fast enough. I have no doubt that there are people with particular issues of concern who feel that way," he said on MSNBC. "But, at the end of the day, I believe that people are going to be fully engaged when this next election comes, because they'll understand exactly what the stakes are."

The Obama administration has had several high-profile spats with liberal activists over the past year, and those incidents came to bear last weekened at Netroots Nation, a gathering of liberal online activists in Minneapolis. 

White House communications adviser Dan Pfeiffer appealed to the audience to back Obama's reelection, but faced a grilling by a moderator over a litany of issues.

Liberal activists were frustrated that the healthcare law President Obama signed last year did not contain a public health insurance option. And despite Obama's repeal of the "Don't ask, don't tell" law preventing gays from serving openly in the military, gay and lesbian activists have said the president has not done enough to enact equal rights for their community. 

Axelrod defended the president's record and said that he would be a far better president for the liberal community than a Republican.

"I heard a Republican debate in which there was discussion of a constitutional amendment on this issue and on reinstating 'Don't ask, don't tell' and so on," he said. "There's going to be a fundamental choice to be made in the next election. I think that choice will be clear to everyone, and will be a galvanizing choice for people across this country."

Obama needs the support of his liberal base in 2012 while also appealing to independents; a voting bloc that strongly supported him in 2008 but drifted toward Republicans in the 2010 midterm elections. The president also frustrated liberals when he signed an extension of the Bush-era tax cuts last year, since he had made a campaign promise to do away with those cuts for the highest earners.

"So, you know, my view is, on this, like so many other things, let's focus on it in real time when the campaign is fully engaged, the choices are clear. I think sometimes people can be hardest on their friends and that there's something of that here," said Axelrod. "But I believe that when the race is fully engaged and when the choices are clear, that you're going to see people who care about this country step forward and participate in this campaign in an enthusiastic way."

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