Group hesitant to back Obama in 2012

With liberal leaders grumbling about what they see as President Barack Obama’s failure to hold firm in the recent debt-ceiling talks and other decisions, one critical player, MoveOn.org, is still deciding whether to mobilize for his campaign.

“We are all incredibly frustrated,” said Justin Ruben, MoveOn’s executive director.

That frustration, over compromises in economic and environmental policy, could turn into a deflated re-election effort by the influential left-wing group’s members, nearly 1 million of whom volunteered for his campaign in 2008 and gave $88 million.

“Republicans will begin with an advantage,” said Thomas Mann, a political scholar at the Brookings Institution. “Obama is going to have to work very hard and build an extensive grass-roots effort.”

The group’s grievances with the White House grew when Obama backed off a proposal to toughen the country’s smog regulations. Ruben said that played into what his members see as a narrative of capitulation, and it has left him wondering whether they will hit the streets again to try to re-elect the president. They are also upset about the president’s failure to carry out a campaign promise to close the Guantanamo Bay prison.

MoveOn, which formed in 1998 in response to the impeachment effort against President Bill Clinton, was one of the first big liberal groups to back Obama in 2007. Its leaders and members mobilized to encourage others to back him.

Obama campaign officials have rejected descriptions of wholesale disenchantment on the left, but they are following a two-pronged strategy: Play down the disappointment in the media, and pay added attention to the groups that are complaining. In a memo Friday, senior strategist David Axelrod said Obama’s support among key groups remains solid.

“Despite what you hear in elite commentary, the president’s support among base voters and in key demographic groups has stayed strong,” he said. “The base is mobilized behind the president.”

Axelrod also pointed to polls showing relatively high approval ratings for Obama among liberals. In the latest Washington Post-ABC News poll, 69 percent of liberals said they approve of the president. A campaign spokeswoman also cited the 12,000 people who signed up for the campaign’s summer fellows program and the more than half-million who gave to the campaign in the second quarter. Nearly half of those donors had never given to Obama before, she said.

The campaign also recently launched Operation Vote, its outreach initiative focused on energizing its base through advertising, online networks and voter registration efforts.

The extra focus could be necessary to reach people such as Serena Zhao, an environmental activist and senior at Harvard University. In 2008, she went to New Hampshire to canvass for Obama and help get out the vote. This month, she protested a visit by Jim Messina, Obama’s campaign manager. She and other students held signs that said “President Obama, Yes You Can. Stop the Keystone XL Pipeline,” referring to a controversial oil pipeline opposed by environmental groups.

“There’s been a feeling of betrayal,” Zhao said. “That word has been tossed around a lot.”

She plans to vote for Obama, but “it’s just a matter of us getting over the disappointment to go out and get on the streets again.”