While Barack Obama and his family were sunning on the beach in Hawaii last week, it was full speed ahead at his headquarters here. When I visited for the first time, the suite of rooms on the 11th floor of a rather posh office building on North Michigan Avenue — known as “The Magnificent Mile” — was filled with young people, most of them engrossed with the laptops on their desks.
I went there in part to take the temperature of Obama’s senior aides before next week’s opening of the Democratic National Convention in Denver. Having seen the Obama “machine” at work in places from Iowa to New Hampshire to South Carolina and elsewhere during the nomination fight, I was curious how they were gearing up for their first national campaign.
The answer to the first question is that they seem very confident.
As for the second, they appear to have expanded the scope of their efforts without losing the purposeful focus that was so important in the defeat of Hillary Clinton and the other challengers.