REUTERS: President Barack Obama is no longer the outsider candidate who fueled his bid for the White House in 2008 with a flood of small donations from new and young voters inspired by his message of hope and change.As a sitting president he has far greater authority and media access and his 2012 re-election campaign is expected to raise $1 billion, which is unprecedented in U.S. politics.
"In 2008, he was very much an insurgent candidate, somebody from out of nowhere with a wholly different story. And the Obama campaign was as much a crusade as it was a traditional campaign for president," said Christopher Arterton, a professor of political management at George Washington University who has also been a Democratic consultant.
With early polls showing Obama leading potential Republican rivals, he announced his re-election campaign on Monday with e-mails and text messages to supporters and a video on the website www.barackobama.com. He is expected to file campaign papers with the Federal Election Commission as early as Monday.
That would allow him to start campaign fund-raising and much of his war chest is expected to come from the kind of big-money donations he has criticized in the past. » | Patricia Zengerle | WASHINGTON | Monday, April 04, 2011
