Obama in Full "Campaign Mode"

웃 · October 10, 2010

With just three weeks before Election Day, President Barack Obama will spend his time much as he did in the final weeks of his own campaign in 2008.

The president will be in Philadelphia Sunday, Miami Monday, and on the road or beaming from the Internet most days from now until November 2, as he tries to turn out his base supporters and convince skeptical independents of the importance of keeping Democrats in control of Congress.

"He has a spectacular God given gift of communication,” says Democratic strategist Paul Begala, a former aide to Bill Clinton. “I just want him to use it to communicate to the American people what Republicans stand for.”

But history may not be on Obama’s side, according to political scientist Ross K. Baker of Rutgers University, just as it wasn’t for Ronald Reagan in 1982, Clinton in 1994, and George W. Bush in 2006. “The White House would love to be able to change the direction of the campaign with well chosen words or well timed speeches,” he says, “but mostly they can’t.”

Obama’s pre-midterms itinerary will take him to all four corners of the country – from Florida to California to Washington and Massachusetts – and in between – to Ohio, Nevada, Pennsylvania and Oregon.

“In addition to raising money and drawing extensive local media coverage, the president is in a unique position to make a compelling case to Democrats and Independents, who got involved in politics for the first time during his 2008 campaign, that their votes are critically important in this election too," says White House spokesman Josh Earnest.

Obama will headline rallies for the Democratic National Committee in Cleveland, Las Vegas and Philadelphia. He will be joined by his wife, first lady Michelle Obama, in Cleveland, as well as Vice President Joe Biden, who will join him there and in Philadelphia and Delaware, giving 2010 an added 2008 feel.

Obama’s appearances at the University of Wisconsin on Sept. 28 and Bowie State University in Maryland last week seemed right out of that playbook, drawing thousands of students and clearly aimed at reigniting the enthusiasm of a key component of his winning coalition – young voters and African Americans.

Obama himself seemed revitalized by the crowds. “The rallies are good for the president,” says Sen. Amy Klobuchar of Minnesota. He’s so good at them.”

Still, the White House is realistic about how much enthusiasm for Obama carries over to other candidates. “An October rally headlined by President Obama complements - but is not a substitute for - a well-organized and well-executed campaign,” says Earnest.

And while the rallies are also good for the base, a larger question is whether Obama should continue, as Pennsylvania Gov. Ed Rendell put it, to try to “persuade the persuadables” – independent voters and moderate or conservative Democrats who are leaning toward voting Republican.

Rendell applauds what was a major focus of the White House’s strategy in September – putting Obama in backyard meetings with small groups of voters. “The small, backyard stuff is important for persuasion,” says Rendell. “I think it’s good for his image.”

The problem is that these encounters with voters - designed, among other things, to show off Obama’s empathy for those most affected by the recession - have had mixed success. And some Democrats think it takes away from what should be Obama’s primary task so close to the election: energizing the base.

The day after his speech in Madison, where he had roused the crowd by saying, “I am telling you, Wisconsin, we are bringing about change, and progress is going to come,” Obama had a decidedly more difficult time convincing voters in a suburban Des Moines backyard that things were getting better.

When Mary Stier, mother of a 24-year-old college graduate who campaigned enthusiastically for Obama, told the president her son and his friends were struggling to find work and “losing their hope,” Obama launched into an explanation of the historic scope of the Great Recession. Then he listed his administration’s accomplishments, in health care, reforming student loans and the economy.

When he was finished, there was silence. Scanning the crowd, the president moved on to the next question.

David Greenspon, who owns an advertising business, pressed Obama on his tax policy and walked away, he told POLITICO, feeling like the president was “a little misinformed about the way small business operates.”

And later, in another backyard encounter in Richmond, Scott Turner, a Democrat who voted for Obama in 2008, was less than impressed. “He was doing what they always do at these things -- take one question and work it toward one of the talking points -- which is fine,” Turner said in an interview.

“That’s what they all do.”

As effective as Obama can be in a big setting, says Larry Sabato, director of the University of Virginia's Center for Politics, he has difficulty connecting with a smaller group.

“He’s a very cool, calm rational backyard speaker,” Sabato says. “He’s certainly isn’t engrossing, where as in a stadium he is. He has that rare rhetorical ability to connect with large audiences, but he doesn’t have it, oddly enough, in one-on-one encounters.”

And of course neither Obama nor his staff has any control over what will make news.

The White House had planned to use a backyard chat in Albuquerque, N.M., to focus on education, highlighting the Democrats’ reforms and Republicans’ proposed cuts. “I talked a lot about education, but people may have a whole bunch of different interests here, and I’d love to hear from you,” Obama told his audience. And sure enough, the one question that eclipsed the event was, “Why are you a Christian?”

And even the president can’t immediately find a job for an unemployed factory worker, or snap his fingers and revamp veteran health care for an injured soldier – so inevitably some of the voters he encounters in such intimate venues will be disappointed – and show it.

“He’s less vulnerable to that disappointment in a larger venue,” says Dennis Goldford, a political scientist at Drake University in Iowa.

The White House has said Obama will do more backyard events like those he held last month, despite the tough questions he faced, but so far he does not have any on his public schedule.

Instead, the town hall events Obama will do this week are in front of friendly audience – and streamed on the Internet. He’ll headline a DNC-sponsored town hall Tuesday at George Washington University and another youth-focused one sponsored by MTV, CMT and BET on Thursday.

Those events conform to what many analysts believe – that the time is passed for trying to convince voters. They think Obama understands that.

“If you look at what he’s saying, their focus is not persuasion, not motivating skeptical independents or undecideds,” says Democratic strategist Dan Gerstein. “What they’re doing is going to the base of the party that’s spirited and to try to cajole and somewhat scare them into voting.”

“If it’s successful it’s the difference of losing the House or not.”

And, according to Begala, this realization has come none too soon.

“Democrats are still trying so hard to make voters love them,” he says. “But this isn’t a love election. This is a hate election and they need make voters hate Republicans. And I don’t see enough of that.”

His solution: “Put the other side on trial.”

In 1994, Begala says, Congressional Democrats were given pocket cards with a list of talking points about their achievements so far. It had to be printed in 6 point type to make it all fit on the card.

In retrospect, Begala thinks it was the “dumbest thing I ever saw.”

"I see Democrats repeating that. It was a mistake in ’94 and a mistake today. It’s not a time in America where voters want to extol and reward Democrat for accomplishments.”

In that 1994 campaign, Clinton, like Obama, embarked on a grueling cross-country trek campaigning for candidates he thought he could help and steering clear of states where his popularity was low. But Clinton was also the first president to be overseas in the prime of the campaign season. Aides made a political calculation that his trip, visiting soldiers in the Persian Gulf and joining ceremonies of an Israeli-Jordan peace pact, would do more for Democrats in midterms than staying stateside.

Bush, however, made a point to stay home in 2006, rather than face voter anger over an unpopular war and corruption among some high-ranking congressional Republicans, said former Rep. Vin Weber (R-Minn.), an adviser to GOP leaders and the Bush White House.

Obama is certainly more popular now than Bush was in 2006, Weber notes, but he is still below 50 percent, which can be a drawback in states with a large number of independents.

“You have to ask if he’s doing more harm than good,” Weber says. “And I think that’s a very open question.”

In the final weeks of midterm campaigning, Obama will step up his appearances on behalf of individual candidates, not mostly focus on Democratic Party events as he has much of this year.

Last week he headlined the Bowie State rally for Maryland Gov. Martin O’Malley and a fundraiser in Chicago for Democratic senatorial nominee Alexi Giannoulias. On Monday in Miami, Obama visit the home of a former Miami Heat basketball star to raise money for Florida Rep. Ron Klein’s reelection. The Cleveland rally will be for Ohio Gov. Ted Strickland. The Obama-Biden Delaware appearance will be to campaign for Democratic nominee Chris Coons, who is in a race for the vice president’s former seat.

Obama will also campaign in Oregon for gubernatorial candidate and former Gov. John Kitzhaber, and in Boston for his close friend, Gov. Deval Patrick, who is seeking re-election.

And before November 2, the president will try to help save some of his former Senate colleagues: incumbent Sens. Patti Murray of Washington and Barbara Boxer of California, as well as Majority Leader Harry Reid of Nevada.

But no matter what happens on Election Day, Obama is scheduled to get out of town a few days later just as the post-mortems are in full swing.

http://www.politico.com/news/stories/1010/43364.html