(Community Matters) Sorry to have missed this week’s national finance committee meetings in DC. From Politico’s Playbook, part of the public briefing. (btw, I love Cutter’s comment & hope we keep seeing more action bypassing our broke Congress):
THE MAP: During a briefing for reporters at the DNC yesterday, Obama 2012 campaign manager Jim Messina outlined five paths that would get President Obama to 270 electoral votes. Each starts with Sen. John Kerry’s 2004 map (246 EVs):
–West Path: Win Colorado, New Mexico and Nevada, plus Iowa (272 EVs)
–Florida Path: Win the Sunshine State (275 EVs)
–South Path: Win North Carolina and Virginia (274 EVs)
–Midwest Path: Win Ohio and Iowa (270 EVs)
—Expansion Path: Win Arizona (272 EVs)
–MESSINA’s point was that a likely loss in any given state isn’t fatal: “Our entire goal in ’08, and especially now in ’12, is to expand the map and have as many ways 270 electoral votes as possible. … Democrats got, in the 90s and early 2000s, involved in just fighting one path. And that was a mistake for the party, and a mistake for how you win elections. And so we are going to be very, very neutral about all the paths and let all of them have opportunities, and see where we are next year. Our goal this year is just get as many paths as we can, and not sort of pick one and say, ‘This is our baby and we’re gonna try to go right after it.'”
–OBAMA 2012’s four stages/phases: Build (April to Aug. 2011) … Execute (Sept. to Dec. 2011) … Deploy (Jan. to March 2012) … Engage (April to Nov. 2012).
TOP QUOTES from the briefing:
–DAVID AXELROD, the architect: “[T]he longer this [GOP nomination] race goes, the more you’re going to see these Republican candidates mortgage their general election campaign to try and win the nomination, and you’ve seen it with Governor Romney. … [T]he shifts he’s made on issues like choice are not going to help him win some of these key suburban areas where I think independent women are going to be an important part of the prescription. … Speaker Gingrich [‘s] penchant for provocation is not going to help him deal with the shortfalls that he has right now among women, among seniors, among some other key constituencies. …
“Newt is back … [T]he lion in winter — that’s L-I-O-N, by the way. I don’t want to stir up any trouble here! … [H]e is the original tea partier. … He led three governmental shutdowns … He was really a forerunner of what we see today. He is, I know, very gauzy about his relationship with President Clinton now. I remember when he led the Congress to impeachment of the president, and I remember the ignominious way in which he left the House. I told my colleagues yesterday a bit of homespun wisdom that I got from alderman in Chicago some years ago … [O]ne of his colleagues wanted to run for higher office and he was really dubious. He said, ‘Just remember, the higher a monkey climbs on a poll, the more you can see his butt.’ … [T]he Speaker is very high on the poll right now, and we’ll see how people like the view.”
–BEN LaBOLT, national press secretary: “[T]he $10,000 bet may end up being Mitt Romney’s grocery store scanner moment.”
STEPHANIE CUTTER, deputy campaign manager, in response to a question about “Democrat-leaning independents who are sort of questioning [Obama’s] competence “: “[T]hey’re now fighting each other to figure out who is more to the right on the Ryan budget. … [O]ver the course of the next year, that’s going to be broken down a million different times. The other point, for this same group of people that you’re talking about, what they do like about this president is that he’s no longer waiting for Congress to act. He’s looking at his own executive power to figure out where he can move things forward. … [W]e’ve seen that have a great impact with precisely this group of people, on key issues that they care about.”
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