daughter with a chronic illness while he was a reporter in an HMO plan. "I spent tens of thousands of dollars out of pocket that I didn’t have. The stress was extraordinary. This bill attempts to fix the system on the basis of the human costs on patients and their families." He called it "wrongheaded to suggest these bills aren't infinitely better than anything we have today. This is an extraordinary moment on which we can win."

He added that he "doesn't question the motives" of the people in this debate on all sides.

Huffington Post's Nico Pitney brought up the president's declining poll numbers. "Is there something in the context of this health care debate that will reverse this trend?" he asked.

Axelrod got into the nuts and bolts of polling, saying there was a "great gap between a naked question they’re asked and when you actually describe what’s in the bill."

He said these are "very hard times," and that once the economy picked up and people realized the benefits to them, "It will impact very positively on people."

"In this town, we’re all obsessed by polls." he said. "It’s not election day, the elections are far off and I assure you the numbers the president is looking at are people who can’t get insurance because of pre-existing conditions."

He talked about Obama watching his mother worry as she was dying of ovarian cancer, with her insurance company claiming she had a pre-existing condition.

"We're not here to look at our poll numbers, admire them and put them up on a shelf… we’re here to do something," he said.

Gina Cooper asked about when we'd see the president fighting for his vision.

DeParle responded, "He's fighting to get this done. You don’t know how many meetings, how many phone calls, how many hours he’s spent on this thing. I don’t mean to be chiding of you, but please appreciate how difficult this is."

Axelrod closed by saying he "appreciated your passion," but the White House would reactly strongly to any "misrepresentation of fact."