Obama Launches Run toKeep the White House

And now who will stop the Billion Dollar Baby, the Obama 2.0, the unattainable Barack, the president of records who, tomorrow, Tuesday at the latest, will deliver the papers to the Federal Election Commission to launch his new challenge to America? They thought he was dead and buried, boiled and done. Instead, the man who this week will officially announce his candidature to the White House is likely to go down in history for yet another record: the richest candidate in the United States.

The envelope of this Bonaventura of America — who in the past two years lived through more than a curse — reads “one billion.” And now he’s saved by the unemployment that finally, even if slowly, is falling — 8.8 percent, 216,000 more jobs — and by the stock market that, from the tears of the recession, has returned to the celebrations of 12 years ago. And by the prospect of an election campaign in which he could present himself as the first commander in chief able to close not one, not two, but nothing less than three wars: Iraq, Afghanistan and — with God’s and Moammar Gadhafi’s permission — Libya.

“One billion” is a thousand million, or about a quarter more than what he already spent in 2008: the highest campaign budget ever. It has been acknowledged by the trusted Jim Messina, the 40-year-old Italian-American whom Barack has given the cash and the keys to the Elections Office that this week will open its doors at One Prudential Plaza, a skyscraper that is an icon in Chicago: “The goal is to reach a much higher number than those 750 million.”* Indeed, the machine is already moving. And when, on April 14, Barack will give the official start to the collection — a big party in Chicago before the tour de force, a week later, in San Francisco, Los Angeles and New York — Jim, former adviser David Axelrod and former social secretary Julianna Smoot, will have already shaken the tree of Democrat donors. Half the White House has already moved to Chicago, starting with Jim’s former supervisor, Rahm Emanuel, former chief of staff to the president, who was elected mayor two months ago.

An occupation in style. On the other hand, it is the first time that a sitting president doesn’t lead from Washington but from his constituency, as if he were still a novice. It is also the case that he will not make a classic announcement tomorrow but will outsource its candidature to an electronic message: a Tweet, a post, a video. The challenge will run on Facebook rather than on TV, hoping to turn back on that anti-system image tarnished by two years of compromises.

There is no more time for mistakes. It is true that over the past 120 years, a Democratic president in office was not reelected only once. But it is also true that that president was named Jimmy Carter — a ghost in whose name the Obama Boys always knock on wood, given the disturbing similarities with the chief: from the promise of change after dark (there it was Richard Nixon; here it was George W. Bush) to the Nobel prize (late in 2002; actually only upon trust).

Agreed: More than tradition it is statistics that seem to back Obama. The last census marked a boom among Latinos, who, along with blacks, were the trump card of 2008. They literally doubled in key states such as Nevada, Virginia, North Carolina, Indiana and Ohio — the geography of success. These are the states that, ripped from the Republicans three years ago, proved decisive.

Chronicle of an announced victory? Let’s not rush: In these coming days, the battle on the budget will start again and his nobility will be manifest. And the counter-election will be hard, for the arm of Bush, Karl Rove, is already stretching out his hand to grab money from billion-dollar corporations. Obama is already collecting money for this very reason: Money is everything here. If you Google “Obama 2012,” the first thing that comes out in the list is a fake spot that invites you to vote for Barack: a very bad caricature of Republicans.

Not only that, the polls show that only 42 percent of the people approve of the performance of the president, compared with 48 percent who don’t approve of it at all. But, as you know, the player who is 50 percent plus one wins. And the enemy that appeared cocky in November after the “thrashing” of the midterm elections and the wind of the tea party is now so divided about the name of the opponent — Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty, that Michele Bachmann who seems stronger than Sarah Palin? — that they had the first debate postponed from May to September.

That’s why the gurus of politics swear that in the end the Billion Dollar Baby should beware of only one candidate: Barack Obama, the man who, from tomorrow, can’t be wrong again.

*Editor’s Note: This quote, while accurately translated, could not be verified.