White House sources say there is increased talk that senior President Barack Obama adviser David Axelrod will exit his post after the mid-term elections, and be replaced by his campaign colleague and business partner David Plouffe.
Plouffe has been holding down the fort at the two’s firm, AKPD Message and Media, and the thinking inside the White House is that Axelrod both needs a break and to begin focusing on 2012 re-election planning.
Meanwhile, Obama, say White House insiders, would like to see if Plouffe’s presence can “shake things up” with a staff that is said to be demoralized. “I remember what it was it like in the last days of Jimmy Carter,” says a longtime Democrat operative. “On certain days, this team rivals that feeling. These kids have no context for what they are going through.”
Plouffe was Obama’s 2008 campaign manager, but chose to stay in the private sector instead of taking a senior White House position. After the special-election victory of Sen. Scott Brown in Massachusetts, Plouffe upped his role as an outside senior adviser to the President.
Plouffe did stay involved politically with Obama, but did so by working with Organizing for America, the political grassroots organization that evolved from the Obama presidential campaign. But OFA has failed to live up to the expectations the White House and the Democrat National Committee set for the group 20 months ago.”
