US PRESIDENT Barack Obama became the first official candidate for the 2012 presidential race yesterday when he sent an e-mail to supporters announcing that he was filing papers with the Federal Election Commission.
“We’ve always known that lasting change wouldn’t come easily,” says the e-mail signed “Barack Obama”. “But as my administration and folks across the country fight to protect the progress we’ve made – and make more – we also need to begin mobilising for 2012.”
The e-mail came with a link to a two-minute video entitled It Begins with Us. In keeping with the grass-roots tone of Mr Obama’s campaign, he does not speak in the video, which contains testimonials from five Americans who are identified only by their first name and state.
A young white man and a middle-aged white man and women who are Hispanic, African-American and white appear in the video, representing the broad constituency Mr Obama targets.
“I don’t agree with Obama on everything,” says Ed, the middle-aged white man. “But I respect him and I trust him.”
Mr Obama hopes to win back independent voters, who abandoned the Democrats in large numbers in last November’s midterm elections. He needs to reconquer the rust belt states of Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin, as well as Colorado, Florida, Indiana, Nevada and Virginia.
Demographics work to Mr Obama’s advantage. Minorities now comprise 36.3 per cent of the US population – a 5.4 per cent increase over the past decade – and four out of five minority voters supported him in 2008.
Mr Obama’s financial advantage is strengthened by launching before his Republican rivals. He raised $750 million (€527 million) in the last campaign and is expected to become the first presidential candidate to bring in more than $1 billion.
Now that he has filed the requisite papers, Mr Obama can begin fundraising himself, in a speech in Chicago on April 14th, and at events in California and New York later this month.
Mr Obama enjoys a significant advantage as the incumbent president. Only once in the last century – when Jimmy Carter lost the 1980 election to Ronald Reagan – has a party that seized the White House from the other side failed to keep the presidency for two terms.
Incumbents have won 14 of the last 19 presidential elections.
It is highly unlikely that Mr Obama will face a challenge for the Democratic nomination. The last three presidents who fought difficult primaries – Gerald Ford, Jimmy Carter and George Bush snr – were so weakened that they lost the election.
Mr Obama also benefits from an experienced, loyal staff, who have played musical chairs between the White House and his re-election campaign. David Plouffe, who managed his 2008 campaign, is now a senior adviser at the White House; David Axelrod, his former senior adviser, has returned to Chicago to play an important role in the campaign.
Jim Messina, who was deputy chief of staff under Rahm Emanuel – now mayor-elect of Chicago – has been named manager of the re-election campaign. Mr Messina’s energy and use of obscene language have earned him the nickname “mini-Rahm”.
The decision to base the re-election campaign in Mr Obama’s home town of Chicago rather than Washington is unprecedented. “I want people in the Chicago headquarters who live and sleep and eat and breathe re-electing Barack Obama as president,” Mr Messina told the New York Times.
Unemployment figures could work for or against Mr Obama. On the one hand, joblessness has fallen by a whole point, to 8.8 per cent, over the past year, and is expected to drop further, to 8.3 per cent next year. But no president since the second World War has been re-elected with a jobless rate higher than 7.5 per cent.
Other pitfalls for Mr Obama include $1.6 billion in annual deficit spending, a national debt that is approaching $14.3 trillion and involvement in three wars. His main achievement, the healthcare Bill he signed in March 2010, is losing support and could be declared unconstitutional by the Supreme Court in the summer of 2012.
The president’s decision to keep the prison at Guantánamo open is particularly unpopular with Democratic voters.
At the same time, Mr Obama is helped by the weakness and large number of Republican hopefuls, only two of whom have made semi-official declarations of intent. By the end of January 2007 – two months earlier in the previous campaign – there were already 17 presidential candidates.