Obama Campaign Adjusts its 2012 Map

Politico reports:

President Barack Obama’s campaign team is gaming out complex state-by-state scenarios for 2012 that anticipate uphill battles in recession-ravaged blue states — and new opportunities in Arizona and Georgia.

Their underlying assumption is that the GOP presidential field remains so fluid – and the country’s economic outlook so devilishly unpredictable – that Obama must construct robust grassroots field operations in nearly every competitive state in order to hit the magic number of 270 electoral votes and win re-election.

If the famously expanded “Obama map” of 2008 was a gesture of emancipation from the cramped Democratic geography of the party’s past presidential campaigns, the equally big 2012 map is a reflection of the reality that there’s not yet a way to know the combination of red, blue and purple states that will add up to victory.

“We are preparing a variety of scenarios to get to 270. We are not putting our cards on any one state and don’t foresee doing that, ” Obama campaign manager Jim Messina told POLITICO, rebuffing GOP suggestions that the president’s electoral horizons are shrinking.

“We’re building our ground campaign now,” Messina said, adding that “2011 is about infrastructure.”