President Barack Obama is relaunching his sophisticated campaign machine as a tax-exempt political advocacy group, with his 2012 campaign manager as the director.
The announcement will be made Sunday, the day of his second inauguration, according to a report leaked to Politico by “a senior Democrat familiar with the plans.”
“The new organization will be separate from the Democratic National Committee [and] Obama’s 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina will be the national chair of the group,” according to Politico.
The machine’s relaunch is more evidence that Obama will be spending much time over the next two years trying to reverse his greatest defeat: the GOP’s takeover of the House in 2010.
His 2012 election machine harnessed many voter databases, myriad detailed polls, psychological studies and marketing analyses to pitch carefully tailored messages to spur support and turnout by niche groups.
For example, numerous slices of the female vote were wooed with derisive comments about Gov. Mitt Romney’s record, suggestions of lifetime economic security for single women and free health care, plus free contraceptives.
The machine succeeded in raising turnout among critical groups — enough to offset Romney’s success with swing voters and married women.
That’s the machinery he needs in 2014 to raise the turnout of Democratic voters in the midterm election. In most midterm elections, the GOPs mid-income supporters turn out at higher rates than the low-income side of the Democratic coalition.
At the White House, the evidence suggests that the 2014 campaign is already underway.
Obama is staging high-profile budget battles that help him portray the GOP as angry enemies of popular entitlement, student-loan and medical programs.
He’s using the Newtown school massacre to launch an anti-violence campaign that portrays himself as the champion of swing-voting suburban moms vulnerable to fears about their children’s safety. In that campaign, the National Rifle Association is being framed as the wild-eyed champions of “assault weapons.”
Yet to be launched are campaigns to spur turnout by environmental voters, African-Americans and gays.