Obama’s 2012 Campaign Is Already Under Way — And You’re Paying for It

posted at 11:25 am on October 14, 2009 by Howard Portnoy
[ Obama ]   

Back in January of this year, FOX News — aka, White House Public Enemy Number One — reported on a curious phenomenon: Here, a full two months after the election, Barack Obama’s massive campaign apparatus had remained largely intact. Generally, within days of an election, campaign staffers are issued final checks, volunteers are thanked, and the operation is dismantled. But not Obama’s team. Equipped with some 13 million email addresses, the campaign team (minus names at the top such as Axelrod and Gibbs, who had moved on to White House jobs) was rechristened Organizing for America, dubbed “Obama 2.0″ by insiders. The “new” organization didn’t even bother with a new domain name, instead moving into the freshly vacated campaign site, barackobama.com.

At the time this little-heralded article appeared, the few scoffers who took notice of it were dismissive of insinuations of impropriety and possible illegalities in such an arrangement. Massie Ritsch, communications director of the Center for Responsive Politics, remarked, “This is a powerful tool that they have if they use it right,” adding that this re-election campaign in waiting would be able to “start up its engines” very quickly for 2012.

So when we expect those engines to start? Is January of this year soon enough? Apparently so, according to an AP article noting that

three of every four official trips Obama and his key lieutenants made in his first seven months in office were to the 28 states Obama won. Add trips to Missouri and Montana — both of which Obama narrowly lost — and almost 80 percent of the administration’s official domestic travel has been concentrated in states likely to be key to Obama’s re-election effort in 2012.

The difference between Obama’s initial presidential bid and this one is that the new campaign isn’t costing him a dime. Rather, the multimillion-dollar pricetag for these trips is coming out of your, the taxpayer’s, pocket.

Not surprisingly, these states that supported him have also received generous allotments of stimulus money compared with states that didn’t. Colorado and Virginia, for example, two traditionally red states that lit up blue for Obama in 2008, have jointly received $8.9 billion from the stimulus bill. Colorado, moreover, has been graced by visits from the president 35 times through early August, Virginia 17.

Speaking of the stimulus, it was engineered to pay out in a fashion most likely to favor Democrats’ and Obama’s reelection chances. Very little of the $787 is scheduled to be released this year. Next year, the payout rate spikes sharply — to have a potential positive impact just in time for the midterm elections. The bulk of the funds are to be released in the runup to the 2012 presidential election.

Cross-posted at Zombie Contentions

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