He's all in, according to the Washington Post:
Obama, fresh off his November reelection, began almost at once executing plans to win back the House in 2014, which he and his advisers believe will be crucial to the outcome of his second term and to his legacy as president.
The Post frames the enterprise as Obama "flipping the traditional script for second-term presidents"--tradition being that vigorous push to spend re-accumulated political capital in the first few months of a renewed, but abbreviated, presidency. However it may be more accurate to say that by necessity Obama's flipping the script for two-term presidents, in that he's constrained to bookending his eight presidential years--two successful years in, two successful years out, the latter of which can only come with a renewed Democratic majority in the House.
In a way that renders the 2014 midterms more suspenseful than Obama's "technical" reelection, which pretty much everyone except Dick Morris in particular and Fox News in general knew was inevitable, especially once the primary likes of a Herman Cain began outpolling the GOP's inevitable nominee. That was Doom writ large, and if Mitt Romney had been paying attention, he would have joined Mitch Daniels and Jeb Bush and Haley Barbour and Chris Christie in not bothering, since 2012's electoral map was as problematic as their base.
A Democratic strategist sets the stage in describing the next action:
Clearly, the president is winning the debate on the sequester, but the sequester is Act 7 of what’s going to be a 12-act play. I think the most significant impact the president has on the midterms will be his job approval rating and favorability.
And that, with a little help from the Post, heightens the suspense:
Obama’s rating is 51 percent--nine points lower than FDR’s in the year when Democrats lost 71 House seats in his second term.
Given the electorate's partisan entrenchment it's hard to imagine Obama's overall approval exceeding the low 50s, but just as dicey is the strategist's assessment that presidential ratings possess such long and locally effective coattails. Empirical data have their doubts. And then of course there's "the-fix-is-in" complication--gerrymandering--on top of the congressional incumbency predicament. Ouch, ouch, and ouch.
Nonetheless there's hope. Obama has always been lucky in his enemies, and, politically speaking, rarely has any president been so lucky as in this epically gaffe-prone, manifestly treacherous, intensely unlikeable bunch still confoundingly called the Grand Old Party.
