Barack Obama reelect’s first job: Reconnect

I believe that the President has to connect with the American people on so many levels. The message has to get out about all that he has accomplished during this first term. The message has to be clear that there is still work to do and that he needs all of us working together to get it done. That is the message that I hope is the loudest.

President Barack Obama’s fledgling reelection campaign is building a volunteer network with the audacious goal of contacting every single person who voted for him in 2008, as part of a reinvented voter outreach that will be as focused on smart phones in 2012 as it was on text messages last time.

Strategists plan to customize videos and other messages for the iPhones and other mobile devices of targeted groups of voters. They also envision “virtual networks” among supporters’ friends and families, so that millions of people will feel a personal connection to the campaign.

Mobilizing millions of volunteers to reconnect with as many of Obama’s 69 million past supporters as is possible, along with raising money for a re-election fight that could cost as much as $1 billion, will be the major focus this year of the campaign now getting off the ground here. Obama himself will not begin extended barnstorming until 2012. (See: Barack Obama kicks off 2012 campaign in Chicago)

“We’re setting ambitious organizational goals for ourselves,” David Axelrod, the spiritual architect of both the past and present campaigns, said in an interview conducted above the clatter of Manny’s cafeteria, his hometown oasis. “The idea is to use new technology to pursue the old-style grassroots campaigning.” (See: Obama '12: Same cast, different story)

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