Barack Obama reelect’s first job: Reconnect

President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign is building a volunteer network with the audacious goal of contacting every single person who voted for him in 2008, as part of a reinvented voter outreach that will be as focused on smart phones in 2012 as it was on text messages last time.

Strategists plan to customize videos and other messages for the iPhones and other mobile devices of targeted groups of voters. They also envision “virtual networks” among supporters’ friends and families, so that millions of people will feel a personal connection to the campaign. Mobilizing millions of volunteers to reconnect with as many of Obama’s 69 million past supporters as is possible, along with raising money for a re-election fight that could cost as much as $1 billion, will be the major focus this year of the campaign now getting off the ground here. President Obama himself will not begin extended barnstorming until 2012.