Obama Campaign Builds Up the Grassroots
Posted in Main Blog (All Posts) on December 29th, 2011 5:38 am by HL
Obama Campaign Builds Up the Grassroots
President Obama’s campaign team has been organizing high turnout for the Iowa’s Democratic presidential caucuses, reports Politico, even though the president isn’t facing a serious primary challenge.
“Team Obama isn’t competing for turnout to rival the GOP field this time — or even match Obama’s own showing four years ago — but they would be happy to best the several thousand votes George W. Bush got there in 2004, campaign staffers say. It turns out that Obama’s Chicago-based political operation views the caucuses as a serious organizing tool and dry run for next November — and sees the relative lack of GOP boots on the ground in Iowa as the basis for a they-don’t-care-about-Iowa campaign theme in the 2012 general election.”
No Schmoozing
The New York Times notes President Obama “does not go out of his way to play the glad-handing, ego-stroking presidential role. While he does sometimes offer a ride on Air Force One to a senator or member of Congress, more often than not, he keeps Congress and official Washington at arm’s length, spending his down time with a small — and shrinking — inner circle of aides and old friends.”
“He typically golfs with a trio of mid- to low-level staff members little known outside the West Wing. He does not spend much time at Camp David, the retreat other presidents have used to woo Washington. His social life runs toward evenings playing Taboo with old friends and their families, Wii video games with his wife and daughters or basketball with Robert Wolf, a banker and the rare new best friend Mr. Obama has acquired since entering politics. He vacations with friends from Chicago on Martha’s Vineyard in August and in Hawaii at Christmas.”
Said James Carville: “This is not a Lincoln bedroom guy. In fact, he’s the anti-Lincoln bedroom guy. He doesn’t seem to relish, or even like, having politicians around.”
Lawmakers Say Gingrich Lobbied Them
Newt Gingrich (R) has been adamant that he did not lobby after leaving Congress in 1999, but the Des Moines Register spoke with Rep. Jeff Flake (R-AZ) and former Rep. Butch Otter (R-ID) who claim that Gingrich “helped persuade reluctant Republicans to vote for the Medicare prescription-drug program, which barely passed” in 2003.
Said Flake, “He told us, ‘If you can’t pass this bill, you don’t deserve to govern as Republicans.’… If that’s not lobbying, I don’t know what is.”
Nevertheless, the director of the ethics watchdog Center for Responsive Politics affirmed that “what Gingrich did probably was not technically lobbying.”
Controversy Centers on California Redistricting
Politico looks at the brewing redistricting battle in California, as a recent ProPublica report alleged that Democrats sought to “systematically game” the newly created independent Citizens Redistricting Commission.
“Drawing on dozens of internal emails and documents, the story reported that Democrats at the highest levels plotted and executed a secret plan to place witnesses before the commission to persuade them to draw a map that is expected to land Democrats several seats in 2012… For Democrats, the fierce pushback underscores the high stakes surrounding the state’s new map. California Republicans had already launched a referendum drive to overturn the commission-drawn state Senate plan before the article was published — and Democrats worry the story will fuel public doubts about the commission’s work and aid Republicans who want to paint the line-drawing as compromised.”
by David Roberts, 
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