Obama announces re-election campaign

WASHINGTON – President Barack Obama’s launch of his re-election campaign marked a sober entrance into a 2012 contest in which he will confront a more challenging electoral landscape than in his path-breaking 2008 election romp.

Obama filed re-election papers Monday, slightly earlier than the last two presidents, an indication of both an aggressive approach and the magnitude of the task ahead. His campaign aides face the time-consuming job of reorganizing and re-energizing Obama’s national grass-roots operation and filling a campaign bank account that could top $1 billion.

In an email to supporters, Obama said laying the groundwork for 2012 “must start today” – even as he maintained that he was staying “focused on the job you elected me to do.”

Steve Murphy, a Democratic strategist, predicted that next year’s vote would be “very close,” more like the tightly contested 2000 and 2004 elections than the last, which Obama won easily. “It’s not as much of an electoral walk for Barack Obama,” Murphy said. “But it’s still a favorable electoral map for him.”

Running to replace an unpopular Republican president, Obama benefited from a financial crisis in the final weeks of the campaign and prevailed by almost 200 electoral votes over GOP nominee John McCain. But Republicans made incursions last fall in many of the areas Obama carried. Several of those states may be out of reach already, and others will be tough to hold, strategists from both parties suggest.

Like other incumbents, Obama wants to avoid being viewed as a candidate for as long as possible to limit the scent of politics in his presidential maneuverings. He did not appear in the two-minute video that accompanied his emailed announcement and he held no public events Monday. He did make an unannounced conference call to supporters in which he described himself as “a little older and a little wiser” than in 2008.

White House press secretary Jay Carney said Obama “is not focused on elections” and that there will be “plenty of time well down the road for politics.”

Obama’s relatively strong position at present reflects his political gains since Democrats were set back in last fall’s midterm election. He also is benefiting from the absence of a clear favorite for the Republican nomination.

Still, unemployment remains high, with some economists forecasting a jobless rate of more than 8 percent on Election Day. That would be the worst jobs figure for a presidential election in more than 75 years.

“The economy is still the biggest risk,” said Linda DiVall, a Republican pollster. “If unemployment stays at 9 percent and you have underemployment that effectively adds another 8 to 9 percent, it will affect his standing with younger voters, and the middle class, and then the whole hope-and-change argument falls a little bit flat.”

Turmoil in the Middle East is also testing Obama’s leadership credentials, DiVall added, while the U.S. military deployments in Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya could create problems with his liberal base and depress Democratic turnout.