Think insurgent, not incumbent for Barack Obama in 2012.
That is shaping up to be the early strategy for the Democratic president's re-election campaign.
"We ought not to act like an incumbent. We have to act like an insurgent campaign that wakes up every single day trying to get every single vote we can," Obama campaign manager Jim Messina said in a video posted Monday on www.barackobama.com.
The president made the case himself last week when he said in a series of political fundraisers that the next presidential election may well be harder to win than in 2008.
"This is going to be just as hard, if not harder, than 2008," Obama said Thursday. "Our work is not finished."
Messina warned against complacency when he outlined the campaign's re-election strategy. He said the 2008 campaign was "special" — Obama rode a youth-driven movement to become the first black U.S. president — but Obama's supporters needed to step up their game to win in 2012.
"If we just run that same campaign we stand a good chance of losing," he said. "We have to assume every single day that we need to build something new, better, faster and sleeker."
Polls point to pessimism
Even as many indicators show an improving U.S. economy, Obama faces pessimism — recent polls show a majority of Americans think the country is on the wrong track.
The president launched his re-election this month and faces a still-unformed Republican field with no clear front-runner.
"Republicans are going to be fired up to take on President Obama and so we all, and all of you out there, have to take the reins of this thing and really build it together," Messina said.
He referred to a U.S. Supreme Court decision last year that removed restrictions on corporate and union campaign spending, which Obama and Democrats have said opened the floodgates for special interest money in politics.
"What this has done is fundamentally change the way campaigns are funded," Messina said. "We have to compete with that."
Obama raised $750 million in 2008, helped significantly by small donations from grassroots supporters.
The 2012 election is expected to be the most expensive in U.S. history.