From “POLITICO e-book: Obama campaign roiled by conflict,” Glenn Thrush, Politico:
“Second-guessing about personnel, strategy and tactics has been a dominant theme of the reelection effort, according to numerous current and former Obama advisers who were interviewed for ‘Obama’s Last Stand,’ an e-book out Monday published in a collaboration between POLITICO and Random House.
“The discord, these sources said, has on occasion flowed from Obama himself, who at repeated turns has made vocal his dissatisfaction with decisions made by his campaign team, with its messaging, with Vice President Biden and with what Obama feared was clumsy coordination between his West Wing and reelection headquarters in Chicago.
“The effort in Chicago, meanwhile, has been bedeviled by some of the drama Obama so deftly dodged in 2008 — including, at a critical point earlier this year, a spat that left senior operatives David Axelrod and Stephanie Cutter barely on speaking terms — and growing doubts about the effectiveness of Democratic National Committee Chairwoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz.
“Many of Obama’s advisers have quietly begun questioning whether they should have picked Wasserman Schultz, an outspoken Florida congresswoman, as his DNC chairwoman. She has clashed with Chicago over her choice of staff and air-time on national TV shows — and they think she comes across as too partisan over the airwaves.
“Obama really doesn’t like, admire or even grudgingly respect Romney. It’s a level of contempt, say aides, he doesn’t even feel for the conservative, combative House Majority Leader Eric Cantor, the Hill Republican he disliked the most.
“The two thing Obama fears most about a Romney victory: A 7-to-2 conservative Supreme Court within a few years. And the equally unbearable possibility, in his mind, that Romney will get to take a victory lap on an economic rebound Obama sees as just around the corner. ‘I’m not going to let him win…so that he can take credit when the economy turns around,’ Obama said, according to an aide.
“Obama has himself to blame for what has, arguably, been the greatest unforced error of his political career: his team’s failure to adequately form a strategy to deal with the avalanche of unregulated cash crashing down on him from GOP and Romney-allied super PAC’s.
“Many on his team now regret not dispatching an aide of Plouffe’s stature to the cause in 2011, someone better equipped to go toe-to-toe with the likes of Karl Rove.
“Axelrod…believed trashing the super PACs was a messaging winner for Obama – a stance vehemently opposed by Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel and Messina. ‘We’re going to lose this [f-ing] thing. Why don’t they get it?’ Messina said of Axelrod and Obama.
“By early 2012, the GOP super PAC floodgates had opened, and Obama reluctantly agreed to endorse a group friendly to his cause, Priorities USA Action.”
Read more: http://www.politico.com/news/stories/0812/79867.html#ixzz247poXnly
I think Wasserman Schultz has been a disaster as head of the DNC. She’s a caricature of a liberal Dem, a South Park figure. It should be a moderate, someone like Evan Bayh or Jon Tester.
I agree with the President that the economy will get better soon (you can’t keep a good business cycle down), and I’d hate to see Mitt get the credit.
Embattled Farmers 