Word: benenson
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...they have even secured the consultancy services of former members of his team. Anita Dunn, who served as senior adviser and chief communications officer to the campaign, and her colleague Bill Knapp, a former media strategist for Obama, have been retained by the Tories. Labour has brought in Joel Benenson, lead pollster and senior strategist to Obama; his colleague Peter Brodnitz, who worked on the Democrats' 2008 congressional campaigns; and Michael Sheehan, a veteran speech coach. (See pictures of Barack Obama on Flickr...
Barack Obama's top pollster, Joel Benenson, talks fast. "Like a New Yorker, because I am," he says. The night before we spoke, he slept four hours, and after more than a year of watching the numbers slide around his big client's signature initiative, health care reform, one can forgive him for betraying a bit of frustration. "It's never enough to just say people are unhappy," he explains. "You've got to understand why they are unhappy...
...Through the worst days, Benenson's message has remained the same. Push forward. Get it done. Three years ago, Benenson, a former New York Daily News reporter from Queens, went head to head with one of the best in the business, Hillary Clinton's pollster Mark Penn, challenging a candidate of "experience" with a candidate of "change." His team toppled conventional wisdom. Now he tells wavering Democrats in Congress to take their own leap of faith: Look past the numbers that show widespread dismay at the health care debate and a nation deeply divided over the Democratic bill. Believe that...
...perhaps most important of all, Benenson believes the current polls confuse a skepticism about health care reform with broad discontent over the political process in Washington. "This is what people don't understand," he says. "People are frustrated that Congress doesn't seem able to work together to do the job that people think they sent them there to do." A solution to this problem is action...
...Obama's aides hope that the passage of health care reform will allow Democrats to reset the debate, away from internal party anxiety and dysfunction. Benenson and others in the White House have mapped out a strategy through November, one that they are betting will put Republicans on the defensive over such issues as reforming Wall Street and money in politics. "Remember, elections are about choices," Benenson says, offering the classic election-year battle cry. "There is a lot of action that is going to happen pretty quickly here that is going to create clear contrast...