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 Facebook and Twitter to resurrect the Obamamania of three years ago.

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 White House deputy chief of staff.

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 Democratic Party.

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 White House political strategist. Axelrod has resumed his 2008 role as the campaign's top strategy guru back in Chicago, where the election campaign will again be headquartered.

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 White House press secretary Robert Gibbs, was expected to be involved as well but is rumored to be considering a job with Facebook.

Only five months ago, in the wake of the Republican takeover of the House and gains in the Senate in the midterm elections, Obama's prospects for reelection were widely rated as glum. The stalled economy and high unemployment, a fierce Republican campaign to repeal his health-care reform law and growing public opposition to the continued U.S. military engagements in Iraq and Afghanistan all cast him as politically endangered.

But a combination of Republican internal conflicts in Congress, improving economic indicators, and particularly a slight but steady increase in hiring and drop in the jobless rate have lifted somewhat the recent shadow over the president's reelection outlook. Also, the absence so far of any politically exciting prospective GOP challenger to him enhances the odds for a second Obama term.

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 Federal Election Commission to start collecting campaign funds. The hesitation suggests uncertainty among the others about their fundraising prospects or the chances of defeating Obama once one of them is nominated.

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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