Why the Obama Campaign Is So Confident About Beating Romney

By Mark Halperin | May 7, 2012 |

Brendan Smialowski / AFP / Getty Images

US President Barack Obama pauses while speaking during a campaign event in Columbus, Ohio on May 5, 2012. 

Chicago

Barack Obama’s decision to base his re-election campaign outside of Washington seems to be working pretty darn well. Its massive, high-rise headquarters in Chicago’s Loop achieves a fine balance between 2008’s hip-casual dorm room (there’s a ping pong table and cheeky homemade signage) and 2012’s systematized Death Star (more employees than I have ever seen in a political campaign, with work stations sub-divided as ever more employees are added). The place hums from early morning until late at night, designed for maximum efficiency and manifest focus.

For the twenty- and thirty-somethings who make up the bulk of the Obama-Biden workforce, the vibrant, stylish Chicago is, by design, removed from the distracting and distorting aspects of the Beltway. At the same time, for those who voluntarily uprooted themselves from the nation’s capital, some surrendering big-time administration jobs, it was a de facto litmus test: just how badly do they want to help the President get four more years?

In a series of interviews with campaign officials in Chicago, it is clear that the entire re-elect operation likes its odds of winning a second term. The informal slogan is essentially, “be confident, but take nothing for granted.” Presidential senior adviser David Plouffe, the 2008 campaign manager now overseeing the enterprise from his perch steps away from the Oval Office, Jim Messina, Plouffe’s 2012 titular successor in Chicago, and their deputies in both cities, believe that, despite the dangers of high unemployment and gas prices, Mitt Romney faces four major barriers to winning the big prize.

First, in the view of the Obamans, Romney is still a weak candidate. His stump skills continue to be uneven at best, with speeches plagued by awkward jargon and passionless rhetoric. They believe his tenure as head of Bain Capital and his term as governor of Massachusetts conceal vulnerabilities yet to be unveiled. “No one’s ever looked at Romney’s record, and there’s a lot there,” said one senior campaign official. “He developed this set of values at Bain about what the economy is all about… Whatever it took to make money… He took that same philosophy to Massachusetts” as governor. Obama’s team is sitting on a multimedia treasure trove of research about both phases of Romney’s career and expect to launch powerful missiles at key moments throughout the campaign, discombobulating the Republican each time.

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