Senior White House adviser David Axelrod on Sunday brushed aside expert predictions that Democrats will suffer steep losses in next year's midterm congressional elections. "I think we're gonna have a good result next -- next November," Axelrod told David Gregory, host of NBC's "Meet the Press."Though Axelrod quickly added "I'm not gonna predict where we are," he roundly dismissed suggestions that Democrats will pay the price at the ballot box for their efforts to push through health care reform legislation, and suggested that President Obama's sub-50-percent approval rating in most polls is unrelated to his heavy investment in the health care fight. "I don't ascribe poll numbers to this particular -- to this particular issue. I think that we're governing, remember, in an economically difficult time. We came to office in the greatest economic downturn since the Great Depression. And so, of course, I could have told you a year ago that our numbers were not gonna be - were not gonna be - as strong a year later."
Still, he predicted that if the health care reforms pass, "a year from now" when "this wave of insurance reforms are implemented" the polls will look better for Democrats as people helped by the reforms are going to come to the conclusion that "This was a pretty good deal for us."
In the meantime, Axelrod asserted that the White House isn't focused on the polls and urged pundits to refrain from dwelling on them until next year. "What I suggest is that you guys wait until next October to talk about polls, when they're actually germane to an election. Because that's an eternity away," he said.