Obama campaign up and running for 1st caucus

Associated Press

DES MOINES, Iowa

One presidential campaign claims an impressive effort in Iowa this year: eight offices opened, 350,000 phone calls to potential supporters and 1,280 events to recruit and train volunteers.

It’s not Mitt Romney or Newt Gingrich or Ron Paul. It’s Obama for America, the president’s re-election campaign, which badly wants to win this battleground state in November, as it did in 2008.

“The Republicans are here today, gone tomorrow,” said Obama volunteer Pat Walters, of Johnston, a suburb of Des Moines. “We’ve been doing this since 2009.”

Next Tuesday’s Republican caucus has dominated political conversations. Largely overlooked is that Obama is running unopposed in the Democratic caucus the same night.

It’s a dramatically different scene from four years ago, when Obama set his course for the White House by beating John Edwards and Hillary Rodham Clinton after months of intense campaigning in Iowa.

Obama can coast as far as this year’s nomination is concerned. But Iowa remains a general-election swing state, and no one assumes his 9-point win here over John McCain in 2008 will give him a cushion next November.

Obama’s campaign never entirely left Iowa or several other competitive states, where he hopes relentless organizing can overcome a weak economy and his mixed record of fulfilling campaign pledges in the face of strong GOP opposition in Congress.

If thousands of volunteers flocked to Obama’s 2008 campaign, this time he’s having to work a bit harder to recruit and energize them.