CHICAGOWe could lose.
Thats David Axelrod, President Obamas chief reelection strategist, injecting an obligatory note of caution into what is in every other way a theres-no-way-we-can-lose assessment of the campaign. From top to bottom, Obamas team keeps this self-effacing qualifier around mostly for amusement, like a yo-yo, a balsa-wood airplane, or a paper-clip necklace.
Every campaign, of course, believes its going to win. Obamas team, however, conveys such a visceral sense of self-confidence that even protestations to the contrary take on air of comically profane absurdity.
I dont want you to leave here thinking Ive got my feet up on my f------ desk and Im sanguine, Axelrod says after a 51-minute interview in which he surveys the landscape and finds nothing but roses for Obama and thorns for GOP nominee Mitt Romney. Im not! I treat this as a struggle to the end, and were going to fight that way.
Fight.
There is no end of fight in the Obama campaign. Pugilism has displaced post-partisanship. The presidents aides fastidiously remind every reporter who asks about the brass-knuckle campaign conducted so far that it spent $25 million on positive ads in May. Losing track of their own talking points, senior advisers then offer a surgical assessment of the political vivisection they performed on Romney on issues ranging from unreleased tax returns and Bain Capital to outsourcing and a Swiss bank account, wielding TV ads and attack lines in June, July, and August.
They didnt give people anything to grab on to, and they allowed us to define him before he could define himself, Axelrod says of Romney. And now they are playing catch-up. And now they are running bio ads. The summer is when candidates and races get defined. Thats why we made a strategic decision that it was better to muscle up in the summer. I cant think of a presidential race determined by paid media after Labor Day.
