Toggle Menu

Ari Berman: Jim Messina Is Alienating Obama’s Base

If Obama's campaign manager has a bad history with the very constituents that elected the president, how will that shape 2012?

Press Room

April 1, 2011

How will President Obama’s 2012 election campaign take shape when his re-election campaign manager, Jim Messina, has a history of alienating grassroots constituencies? The Nation’s Ari Berman joined MSNBC’s The Last Word to discuss his latest piece on Obama’s controversial move of appointing the former White House deputy chief of staff as his campaign manager.

Most troubling, Messina doesn’t see eye to eye with progressives on issues like healthcare or gay rights. “This is now the man who will be the top liaison to Obama supporters and would really need to gin them up for the 2012 campaign,” Berman says. “It really makes you wonder, is this going to be Obama ’08, a grassroots bottom up campaign, or is this going to be very much a top-down conventional centrist campaign?”

—Sara Jerving

Press RoomTwitterBig Nation announcements and select interview clips. For media inquiries, booking requests or further information, please contact: Caitlin Graf, VP, Communications, The Nation press [at] thenation.com / 212-209-5400


Latest from the nation