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- iHaveNet.com: Politics
by Jules Witcover
April 9, 2011
President Obama's announcement, in an Internet video to his supporters, that he will seek a second term next year had all the drama and excitement of a note slipped under your back door in the wee hours of the evening.
Intentionally, it was a low-key signal to the faithful, and particularly the younger set known as "Gen 44," to start fanning the cooled ashes of the 2008 Obama campaign, even as its principal is up to his ears in running the country, and parts of the world as well.
The message of the e-mail is in its slogan, "It Begins With Us." It conveys that once again as in 2008 the grunt work must fall to grass-roots workers not only in their communities around the country, but also to the Internet army of political activists that exploited the blogosphere so effectively for Obama then. They are encouraged to fire up their use of social media such as
Notably, also as in 2008, this grass-roots effort will include small-donor fundraising that will give the campaign a thick veneer of populist backing to go along with a major drive for mega-givers. It's already under way by new campaign manager Jim Messina, until recently the
Later this month, Obama himself is to hold such fundraisers in Chicago, San Francisco and Los Angeles in what promises to be the largest money-grabbing operation the history of presidential politics. This will be so even as Obama is unlikely as of now to have any primary challenges in the
In a shuffling of key 2008 players, Messina has replaced 2008 campaign manager David Plouffe, who in turn has replaced David Axelrod as the chief
The team of Axelrod and Plouffe, partners in the successful Chicago political consultant firm that encouraged Obama to run in 2007, will continue to be critically engaged as advisers across the board in policy as well as politics. The third member of the 2008 triumvirate, recently resigned
Only five months ago, in the wake of the Republican takeover of the House and gains in the
But a combination of Republican internal conflicts in
Among a large number of presidential hopefuls, only one -- former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty -- has formed an exploratory committee, the first step required under the
The most likely additional entrant as of now seems to be former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney, a one-time moderate striving for a more conservative identity in a party that has moved more detectably to the right with last November's House influx of tea party adherents. Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich ambiguously inched closer recently by saying in effect he was thinking about thinking about running. But his heavy baggage of previous political and matrimonial missteps still plagues him.
With flamboyant conservative cheerleaders Sarah Palin and Rep. Michelle Bachmann providing much of the Republican heat, the party still lacks a strong middle-roader beyond the seemingly reluctant Gov. Mitch Daniels of Indiana. So earlier reports of Obama's political demise seem both exaggerated and premature.
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