For the second time in a scant three months, the president is coming to San Francisco. While he’s been here nearly a dozen times since taking office, this is first stop while 100% in campaign mode. Even though California isn’t, by any stretch of the imagination, a swing state, there are a number of absolutely essential seeds the Obama campaign needs to plant in the Bay Area if he’s going to hopey changey his way to a second term.
By some estimates, Obama is expected to raise over $1 billion over the 2012 campaign and it’s likely a lot of those dollars are going to come from the Bay Area. During the less-than 24 hours the president will be in San Francisco, he’s virtually guaranteed to bring in at least $7 million.
4/20 1PM: Obama’s scheduled to arrive at SFO on Air Force One.
4/20 1:45 PM: Freeway traffic’s sure to take a hit as he’ll then head down to Palo Alto for an online Facebook Town Hall event, where he’ll be taking questions from average, everyday social networking morons. Here’s a personal YouTube video from Barry Obammy himself asking you to stop “friending and defriending each other” long enough join in. A White House spokesman told reporters last week that the Facebook event is “an attempt to reach people who may not get their news though traditional news sources like newspapers and the network news.”
(Note: I know it’s going to be real tempting for everyone on Facebook to pester the president about legalizing marijuana because it’s 4/20 [the anniversary of marijuana’s Bar Mitzvah], but please, please, please don’t. You already know what the answer is going to be and it’s just wasting everyone’s time. If you really care, there might be an actual, non-virtual protest for pot on Thursday. Kthxbai!)
4/20 Dinnertime: When he was last in the Bay Area, Obama made a jaunt down to Woodside for a dinner with billionaires Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerberg at the home of venture capitalist superstar John Doerr. This time, the prez will be raking it in at a $35,800 a head fundraiser hosted by Salesforce.com CEO Marc Benioff in his Pac Heights home. You’ll know the place by the protesters picketing outside.
4/20 8:30 PM: Time for a massively sold out, $25 dollar a ticket campaign kick-off event at the Nob Hill Masonic, which will be picketed too.
4/21 7:30 AM: After, as Leah Garchik reports, spending the night at the SoMa InterContinental, he’ll split the difference between the populism of the Facebook event and Benioff’s exclusive fundraiser with a private breakfast at the St. Regis that starts at $5,000 a plate.
4/21 10:45 AM: It’s back down the freeway (which means traffic fun) and onto Air Force One, which will likely take off before the pro-pot protesters have rolled out of bed.
See, something for everybody. Except Republicans. And that’s why the president keeps coming back.
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