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Obama reelect's first job: Reconnect
CHICAGO — President Barack Obama’s fledgling reelection campaign is building a volunteer network with the audacious goal of contacting every single person who voted for him in 2008, as part of a reinvented voter outreach that will be as focused on smart phones in 2012 as it was on text messages last time.
Strategists plan to customize videos and other messages for the iPhones and other mobile devices of targeted groups of voters. They also envision “virtual networks” among supporters’ friends and families, so that millions of people will feel a personal connection to the campaign.
Mobilizing millions of volunteers to reconnect with as many of Obama’s 69 million past supporters as is possible, along with raising money for a re-election fight that could cost as much as $1 billion, will be the major focus this year of the campaign now getting off the ground here. Obama himself will not begin extended barnstorming until 2012. (See: Barack Obama kicks off 2012 campaign in Chicago)
“We’re setting ambitious organizational goals for ourselves,” David Axelrod, the spiritual architect of both the past and present campaigns, said in an interview conducted above the clatter of Manny’s cafeteria, his hometown oasis. “The idea is to use new technology to pursue the old-style grassroots campaigning.” (See: Obama '12: Same cast, different story)
Democratic officials said they recognize that Obama for America, the campaign apparatus Axelrod helped build for 2008, was a once-in-a-lifetime masterstroke that cannot be duplicated. So the president’s political machine is being reinvented with the goal of creating a different kind of magic around a sitting president who is juggling multiple crises, amid a fragile economy and an uncertain national mood. (See: History happens: Obama wins)
“Hope and change may be weathered, or tempered, by hard experience,” Axelrod said. “But I think those things are still there. People still believe strongly that we can shape the future. I think we can rekindle that sense of energy and shared commitment.”
Two years later, though, the state of the art looks archaic. A hallmark of the first Obama campaign was its sophisticated use of email and text messages for organizing and fundraising. But Obama for America made no formal effort on the infant Twitter, and Facebook was an afterthought. (See: '08 new media army takes many paths)
This time, a huge staff will specialize in various slices of social media. And plans call for much more spending on digital advertising, on the Web and on other platforms that advisers will not discuss.
“It’s additive, not a replacement,” one top adviser said. “A huge chunk of voters still listen to the local evening news.”
Obama’s brain trust says his huge potential edge is a mobilized grassroots, which is why his announcement video featured unscripted musing by supporters drawn from the campaign’s database. There’s a glimpse of the president, but he never speaks. After watching the video, supporters were encouraged to use “I’m in” Facebook tags to spread the word. (See: President Obama launches reelection campaign with video)
“We have to convince them to build this living, breathing organism themselves,” said a Washington-based official.
As a practical matter, Obama has a day job. And the Obama team thinks that appearing presidential is also good politics.
“Doing his job is the most important message,” said a member of Obama’s inner circle.
The Republican field is fractured and looks weak, but Obama advisers say they are preparing for a ferocious campaign that could once again come down to a couple of swing states. The advisers contend that the country is far too closely divided to imagine a re-election scenario like 1996, when Bob Dole never came within striking distance of President Bill Clinton.
The biggest concerns include independent voters, who are fickle by definition, and Midwestern, blue-collar white men, who were the last demographic group to go along with Obama in 2008.
“We won last time, in what was called a landslide, with 53 percent of the vote, which tells you how small the margin for error is,” Axelrod said.
Democratic officials are intently focused on three states that Obama won last time – Virginia, Colorado and Nevada – that provide different paths to victory as an alternative to the traditional dependence on Ohio and Florida. But they are also trying to replicate the bold map strategy of 2008 by eyeing Texas, Arizona and Georgia – three states he lost last time – as potential targets. Changing demographics in the three states have yielded hundreds of thousands of currently unregistered Hispanic voters who could be receptive to Obama.
The campaign plans to lavish attention on Virginia, where the Senate campaign of former governor Tim Kaine will help them turn out young voters from Charlottesville to northern Virginia, and minority voters in Richmond and Hampton Roads. The Democratic National Convention is being held in Charlotte, N.C., in part because of the potential spillover benefits in southern Virginia.
The other big bet that Obama’s team had to place early was on his headquarters city. Some members of his inner circle pushed for basing the reelection campaign in northern Virginia, as President George W. Bush did in 2004. People with families wouldn’t have to move to snowy Chicago, and all the key players from the campaign and White House could quickly assemble for strategy meetings.
In backstage conversations, Bush-Cheney ’04 officials warned their successors that there is a natural rivalry between a White House and a reelection campaign, and distance could exacerbate the tensions. But friends say the president and First Lady Michelle Obama were always more comfortable with a Chicago headquarters, and did not hesitate about putting it here.
Aides insist that geography will not be a disadvantage, in part because the leadership of both the campaign and the West Wing have worked together for years. “You’re going to have a seamless mindmeld,” one member of the team said.
Axelrod has known Bill Daley, the White House chief of staff, for 30 years. He and David Plouffe, a senior adviser who functions as White House COO, were once business partners. And campaign manager Jim Messina was right-hand man to Plouffe when he ran Obama's 2008 campaign.
“The whole campaign benefits from being insulated from the day-to-day in Washington,” Axelrod said. “Everyone you run into is not pummeling you with the conventional wisdom. Secondly, symbolically, it’s important. We believe in grassroots politics. The impetus for our campaign – then, and now – is millions of people organizing. … Thirdly, because we are reaching out all over the country, Chicago is a very central location.”
Axelrod was the first to make the heartland move, leaving his role as White House senior adviser at the end of January to return to his longtime home, where he once was a political reporter for the Chicago Tribune. Now, he’s enjoying walks along Lake Michigan, has trimmed down enough that he fits into old suits he had not worn in years, and has ordered a Ford Escape hybrid.
“There is a different conversation that goes on in places like Manny’s than you hear in watering holes in Washington,” Axelrod said.
“It’s important to kind of take a step back and say, ‘How are they going to make this decision? … What are the consequential things? How are people processing what they see and what they hear? I want to spend some time thinking about that. Because it’s important to speak to people in terms that are relevant to them.”
All of these plans are being made in an obvious vacuum: No one is sure who Obama’s opponent will be. Top Democrats seem convinced it will wind up being Mitt Romney or Tim Pawlenty, but even that is unpredictable in a race where at least a couple of winners are likely to emerge from the early-voting states of Iowa, New Hampshire, South Carolina and Nevada.
Democratic officials are convinced that winning the GOP nomination may require vitriol and partisanship that may position the winner poorly for the general election. That’s why some Obama advisers were secretly delighted when Republican congressional leaders took the bait and lashed out at the president after his deficit-reduction speech Wednesday, in which he had baited them with some harsh rhetoric of his own.
Axelrod worries chiefly about things he can’t control or predict – a change in the trajectory of the economy, or an unsettling event late in the campaign.
“I am confident, but also vigilant,” he said. “I know we’re going to have to work for this.”
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