That Stink Of Fear

Something has gone very, very wrong in the plotting planning of the Obama administration.

Beginning Sunday, the White House will harness every part of the Democratic Party’s machinery to defend President Obama’s budget and portray Republicans as reflexively political, according to party strategists.

 

A participant in the planning meetings described the push as a successor to Democrats’ message that Rush Limbaugh is the Republican Party leader. “We have exhausted the use of Rush as an attention-getter,” the official said.

David Plouffe, manager of Obama’s presidential race, helped design the strategy, which includes the most extensive activation since November of the campaign’s grassroots network. The database-which includes information for at least 10 million donors, supporters and volunteers-will now be used as a unique tool for governing, with former canvassers now being enlisted to mobilize support for the president’s legislative agenda.

Others involved in the planning included White House senior adviser David Axelrod; the DNC chairman, Virginia Gov. Tim Kaine; and DNC Executive Director Jennifer O’Malley Dillon.

 This is not the strategy of a team that is winning politically. This is more like a quarterback who is beginning to hear footsteps. This is fear. Four fingers of fear, straight up. This an administration that is foundering – no winning administration would even come up with this plan, much less leak it as a trial balloon to the media.

One other thing. If the White House is planning to harness Obama’s ten million-strong database of helpers, doesn’t that make the database of donors and helpers public property? Obama does not work for himself, he works for the American people.

I think the Obama campaign just crossed a line they did not think about. Obama cannot use that list from the White House and claim it is campaign stuff. Can’t have it both ways here. It is either campaign-related or it is public property.

I suspect that they are more than a bit frightened right now.

Via Memeorandum.