White House targets local media on ObamaCare
President Barack Obama has bungled HealthCare.gov so badly that he's told senior aides to not even try to win positive coverage from the national press.
Instead, they're going local.
In the past month, Obama and his Cabinet have hit nine of the top 10 cities with the highest concentration of the uninsured, while senior administration officials have held almost daily reporter conference calls in nearly a dozen states to challenge Republican governors who refuse to expand Medicaid.
Obama's political arm, Organizing for Action, is taking a similar approach, holding protests — some attended by only a dozen or so people — that win coverage on the local pages of the nation’s small-town newspapers.
The local strategy is unusually aggressive, even for a president on the ropes and desperate to circumvent the national media. It's been the only way to break through the glut of bad headlines and go on the offense to make the law work — although even when the White House showers attention on small markets, the results can be mixed.
Obama, thin-skinned about media coverage of his presidency and often frustrated by the White House press corps, knows a few favorable local headlines is as good as it gets these days.
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