Stephen K. Bannon and Citizens United's 'The Hope and the Change' Ready to Rock Obama, RNC

Get ready, Obama administration. It’s going to be a bumpy ride.

“The Hope and the Change,” the latest project from Citizens United, directed by Stephen K. Bannon, the man behind “The Undefeated,” “Generation Zero,” and “Occupy Unmasked,” will debut next week during the Republican National Convention in Tampa. And this is one partisan project not aimed at its own side. The folks behind the film are directly targeting Democrats who may have had enough of the president’s “hope and change” razzle dazzle.

The film is slated for a September release in theaters, and will hit cable up until the election after that. 

And it’s not kind to Obama.

“The Hope and the Change” is, according to the Daily Beast, “sophisticated and potentially potent effort … Instead of featuring strident partisan voices such as Morris or Ann Coulter, the cast of 40 is composed entirely of registered Democrats and independents who voted for Obama in 2008. This reflects a political premise shared by Bossie and Stephen K. Bannon, the film’s director–that the 2012 election will be decided by that group of voters in key states whose enthusiasm for Obama has descended toward disillusion.”

In this, both Bannon and Bossie are eminently correct. Obama’s greatest failure has been with those on his own side, who truly believed in their Hope and Change President. He’s fallen short. And Bannon and Bossie are tapping into the angst of former Obama supporters to make that case. They worked with liberal pollster Pat Caddell to design focus groups that would evaluate the ineffectiveness of the president.

The results are nothing less than stunning. And audacious. The opening of the film shows Barack Obama descending from the clouds via plane to the DNC in Denver, to a breathlessly waiting audience. The rest of the film shows how that breathlessness transformed into asphyxia.

As Caddell says, “Politically, this speaks to what really is the Obama crisis … I understand why Chicago never goes back to reminding people what they felt in 2008.”

Advertisement for the film is already in process. It will serve as both promotion for the movie and as a reminder to the public of what they had when Obama ran in 2008 — and what Obama has transformed his goodwill into.