A survey of the political landscape more than a year out from the 2012 presidential election reveals a tale of diametrically opposed campaigns between that of an entrenched incumbent and early-stage challengers. An army of Democratic volunteers — armed with smart phones — has been dispatched as part of a flourishing grass-roots network on behalf of President Obama while Republicans are just laying the groundwork for their campaigns with small clusters of workers in early primary states, such as Iowa and New Hampshire.
Team Obama is banking that such early outreach will give the president a head start over the eventual Republican nominee, who will have had to spend months winning party primaries before focusing more on the national landscape.
“2011 is about infrastructure,” one Obama senior campaign official told The Washington Examiner. “We’re not entering the campaign with a database. Obama for America has served as an active organization in states across the country over the previous two years with supporters in communities across the country talking to their networks about the president’s vision. Many volunteers are re-engaging with our organizers as the campaign gets underway.”
But campaign aides also acknowledge this sobering reality: It won’t be as easy as 2008.
Obama rode a wave of voter dissatisfaction with the economy into a comfortable victory over Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz. This time around he’ll be running into economic headwinds, forced to defend his policies amid a 9 percent unemployment rate likely to even out the electoral map in the wake of historic Democratic pickups in 2008.
Obama’s re-election team, which ran one of the most disciplined campaigns three years ago, predicts that campaign efficiency will offset political vulnerabilities on the horizon.
Pointing to a Republican field in flux, Democrats say Obama can build the infrastructure in several states traditionally not on the Democratic map to amass 270 electoral votes.
Democratic strategists recognize that the path to re-election will certainly be difficult in states like Ohio and Florida, where the economy has battered the employment ranks and created widespread disillusionment with the White House.
However, Democrats are looking to bring other traditionally GOP states into the fold, particularly Arizona, where liberal organizers cite Hispanic backlash against Republican-backed immigration policies, and Georgia, which Obama lost in 2008 after posting the best showing by a Democratic nominee since 1980.
Republicans counter that Obama’s campaign prowess and a deep war chest — the president expects to raise up to $1 billion — will not overcome a stagnant economy. They point to the 2010 midterm election, in which the GOP took over the House, picked up additional Senate seats and flipped control of 19 state legislatures and 10 governorships.
However, Republicans have struggled to generate excitement out of the gate and at least one campaign is on the verge of crumbling. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s senior campaign staff resigned en masse Thursday amid questions of Gingrich’s commitment to the race.
For their part, Obama campaign strategists anticipate a social media push that will make their 2008 effort, which rewrote the rule book for campaign use of the Internet, look elementary by comparison. Already, Obama has 8.5 million Twitter followers — a trove of potential resources — dwarfing that of any other American politician.
