President Barack Obama has kicked off his 2012 effort with a campaign video (see below) posted on his website that encourages people to help get out the vote, in hopes of recapturing the grassroots fervor that helped him get elected in 2008. Obama doesn't appear in the video, but many of his supporters do, and one says, "President Obama is one person...Plus he's got a job. We're paying to do a job so we can't ask him to take some time off to get us all energized so we better figure it out."
Politico reports, "An official filing with the Federal Election Commission is expected to come Monday so that Obama can begin fundraising for his campaign. His first official fundraiser is scheduled for April 14 in his hometown of Chicago. Two more are set for the following week, in San Francisco and Los Angeles, with ticket prices ranging from $25 for young adults — “Gen44” — to $2,500 for VIPs." Politico also notes Obama's email message from this morning to supporters:
“We’re doing this now because the politics we believe in does not start with expensive TV ads or extravaganzas, but with you — with people organizing block-by-block, talking to neighbors, co-workers, and friends,” he says, explaining why the launch is coming more than 19 months before Election Day. “And that kind of campaign takes time to build.”
“So even though I’m focused on the job you elected me to do, and the race may not reach full speed for a year or more, the work of laying the foundation for our campaign must start today,” Obama continues in the written message. That includes fundraising for what could be the first-ever $1 billion campaign.
The Caucus points out that unlike his change message in 2008, "Now, Mr. Obama must defend his own unpopular wars, an economic recovery that remains fragile, fiscal policies that have drawn skeptics and energy policies that have stalled in the face of natural and manmade disasters. And most of all, the president must find a way to explain how he made good on promises to change the way Washington conducts itself in spite of a brutally divisive health care fight and an ongoing budget standoff that appears to have bogged down in the same politics that Mr. Obama decried as a candidate in 2008."
