Analysis: Challenge really starts as Democrat machine gets into gear

PRESIDENT Barack Obama used the power of the presidency to ring the general election’s opening bell, declaring this week in no uncertain terms that he and his mammoth organisation are ready to take on Republican would-be candidate Mitt Romney – whether the presumptive Republican nominee is ready or not.

Despite what he may say, Mr Romney is not. Mr Romney, who is on track to claim his party’s presidential nomination in June, if not before, is facing a challenge of historic proportions.

Just one Republican – Ronald Reagan – has defeated a Democratic incumbent president in the last century. And Romney faces an incumbent with five times more staff, ten times more money, and the world’s greatest bully pulpit.

Using that platform on Tuesday, the president criticised Mr Romney by name, saying his likely general election opponent supported a “radical” Republican budget plan he characterised as “thinly veiled social Darwinism.” He accused Republican leaders of becoming so extreme that even Mr Reagan, one of the party’s most cherished heroes, would not win a Republican primary today.

The president’s critique came just one day after his campaign launched a TV ad in six general election battleground states that suggested that Mr Romney stood with “Big Oil.” It all comes amid a Democratic effort to paint Romney as part of a Republican Party that Obama’s party is casting as too conservative for the country.

Mr Romney hit back after he won the latest primaries, telling cheering supporters in Milwaukee that the president has become “a little out of touch” after “years of flying around on Air Force One, surrounded by an adoring staff of true believers.

“You know, out-of-touch liberals like Barack Obama say they want a strong economy, but in everything they do, they show they don’t like business very much.”

With that, the contours of the general election were set – and the attack lines unveiled.

Each candidate cast the other as too extreme for the centre of the country – speaking directly to the independents who play a critical role in general elections because they determine who wins close races. The number of independent voters in America has swelled. That means they are a top target for both candidates in what Republican and Democratic operatives alike anticipate will be a close election for reasons that include the country’s increasingly polarised nature.

• Steve Peoples covers the presidential campaign for The Associated Press.