Obama 2012 campaign’s Operation Vote focuses on ethnic minorities, core liberals

By Peter Wallsten, Published: September 24

President Obama’s campaign is developing an aggressive new program to expand support from ethnic minority groups and other traditional Democratic voters as his team studies an increasingly narrow path to victory in next year’s reelection effort.

The program, called “Operation Vote,” underscores how the tide has turned for Obama, whose 2008 brand was built on calls to unite “red and blue America.” Then, he presented himself as a politician who could transcend traditional partisan divisions, and many white centrists were drawn to the coalition that helped elect the country’s first black president.

Today, the political realities of a sputtering economy, a more polarized Washington and fast-sinking presidential job approval ratings, particularly among white independents, are forcing the Obama campaign to adjust its tactics.

Operation Vote will function as a large, centralized department in the Chicago campaign office for reaching ethnic, religious and other voter groups. It will coordinate recruitment of an ethnic volunteer base and push out targeted messages online and through the media to groups such as blacks, Hispanics, Jews, women, seniors, young people, gays and Asian Americans.

The campaign this month hired a longtime Jewish political activist as a point person for that community, the first of many such hirings to come this fall as staffers are brought on from each of the target groups.

The move comes as Obama has endured criticism from many liberal activists who charge that he has ceded too much ground in budget battles with Republicans. In recent days, the president has sharpened his partisan tone in public remarks on jobs and the economy, a change that has drawn praise from Democrats worried that flagging enthusiasm among core party voters could hurt Obama’s reelection chances.

And it is complemented by changes at the White House, including the impending hiring of a new Jewish community liaison and the recent promotion of another aide tasked with forging closer ties to black lawmakers, who have accused Obama of shying away from boosting troubled African American communities out of fear of alienating white voters.

“He was an exciting candidate, a fresh face,” said Rep. Steven R. Rothman (D-N.J.), one of Obama’s earliest 2008 backers. “And now he is an experienced president with a lot of maturity and more successes than failures legislatively, but in a divided government [there is] some inevitable disappointment.”

“I don’t agree that the specialness of his candidacy will be absent from this election,” Rothman added. But “the world has changed. The American economy has changed.”

A different campaign

The tactical shift from 2008 is a matter of “survival of the most adaptable,” said longtime Democratic strategist Paul Begala, who is advising an independent, pro-Democratic group called Priorities USA.

“They did everything right in 2008, but that doesn’t mean they should do everything the way they did it in 2008,” Begala said. “It’s completely changed circumstances. You can’t be as untraditional as they were in 2008 when you’re the president. He’s the man now.”

Campaign officials say the program has been in the works from the earliest planning stages and that it was always their intention to maximize support from key voter groups. The difference now, they say, is that unlike in the frenetic primary contest and short general election campaign of 2008, Obama and his team have the luxury of time to establish a more expansive strategy, with 14 months still to go before the election.

The campaign officials say they have not given up on wooing independents, and the 2012 presidential election will certainly involve a fierce fight for the college-educated whites and suburbanites who were more likely to back Obama in 2008 than the working-class whites who have always been more skeptical.

“What will matter most to Americans of all backgrounds boils down to this: the President is fighting every day to provide economic security for the middle class and to make the economy more fair, while the Republicans want to double down on policies that led to the challenges we face,” campaign spokesman Ben LaBolt said in an e-mail.

Exit polls showed that Obama won 43 percent of the white vote in 2008 — in the typical range for a Democrat — but Gallup shows that his approval rating among whites now stands at less than a third.

Ultimately, the Obama strategy for reaching independents will depend largely on whom the GOP nominates; polls suggest a variation in how the different Republican candidates might perform with that group.

Still, the formula for Obama comes down to this: convincing enough additional minorities and core liberals to turn out and vote next year to make up for a loss of support from centrist and conservative whites.

The focus on key ethnic and liberal groups is far more robust this time, aides say, as the campaign scours battleground states where the election is likely to be decided on the margins.

“It’s more comprehensive” than four years ago, said a campaign official, speaking anonymously to discuss internal strategy. As an illustration, the official pointed to a state with heavy concentrations of blacks and Hispanics. “How do we look at Florida and look at the makeup of that state and get to 50 percent plus one?”

Read more at Washington Post