Rep. Emanuel Cleaver (D-Mo.), the new chairman of the Congressional Black Caucus, emphasized Monday the difficult task that he believed Democrats have ahead in getting President Obama reelected in 2012.
"It's realistic for our party to understand the enormous challenge we're going to have, to get him back in the White House in 2012," Cleaver said, according to a report from NBC's Washington affiliate.
"It will not be a landslide or an easy victory," Cleaver added. "We're going to have to scrape and battle for every vote we get."
Despite Emanuel's willingness to claim that there was little certainty of Obama winning another term, the three-term congressman appeared confident that Obama's résumé would stand out as a positive in the forthcoming reelection effort -- if Democrats can message it properly.
"The time is definitely now to communicate and to show what we've been able to get done so far in his presidency," Clever said. "There's so much that the president has achieved, yet receives no acknowledgement for it. That has to change."
While many on the left had loudly expressed their dissatisfaction over Obama's alleged failure to more aggressively pursue his agenda while he had large majorities in both the House and Senate, a flourish during the lame duck session of Congress at the end of last year appeared to have given Obama a slight bump in the polls, though his disapproval rating still hovers slightly above his approval rating.
Perhaps compounding Cleaver's candid statement about the quest to reelect Obama are a number of recent survey results that show some frontrunning potential GOP candidates nipping at the president's heals in a few key states.