In 2008, Plouffe ran Barack Obama’s state-by-state insurgent campaign against Hillary Clinton, using technology, heaps of data, the excitement of young people and an inspirational message to defeat an entrenched, seemingly inevitable front-runner.

In 2014, the San Francisco-based ride-sharing company wants him to do the same thing to “Big Taxi,” its catchall term for the regulators, taxi drivers, medallion owners and local pols who have thrown up roadblocks from Boston to Miami to Kansas City as Uber has expanded.

“We’ll be trying to change the point of view of established politicians, and there’s a lot of resistance coming from people who want to protect the status quo,” Plouffe told POLITICO as news of his hiring broke Tuesday.

The company didn’t announce how much it will pay Plouffe, but he could see a windfall if the company eventually goes public.

Uber is giving him a lot of the same tools Plouffe has wielded before: The company’s core user base resembles the young, educated and diverse city-dwellers who powered Obama to victory. While Obama’s 2008 coolness factor inspired a wave of the politically apathetic to pour small donations into his campaign coffers, Uber has proved adept at persuading die-hard fans to sign petitions and pester local officials. It also has a reported $17 billion valuation.

( Also on POLITICO: David Plouffe joins Uber as ‘campaign manager’)

Plouffe, one of the most sought-after men in Washington and an often-rumored contender for White House chief of staff, joins a company with seemingly limitless ambitions — and can give it some crucially needed cachet before it goes public. It also appears likely that the longtime Obama hand will play a role in transforming Uber — which he called a “once-in-a-generation company” — from a bar-hopping shuttle for tech-savvy millennials to an urban logistics powerhouse.

His new job essentially aligns him with the “wine track” Democratic coalition that Obama attracted in 2008 — a new generation of liberals who are fluent in technology and more skeptical of regulations than the “beer track” coalition that supported Clinton, which was heavy with the unions and local government employees that Uber is fighting.

Some Republicans were amused to see a top Obama ally doing battle with Big Government.

“It’s ironic that Plouffe got the regulation king elected and now is trying to push for deregulation,” Republican National Committee spokesman Raffi Williams wrote in an email. “I guess Uber thinks that Plouffe might be able to talk some sense into the Democrats who are afraid of innovation and try to stamp out any innovative business with overregulation.”

But in some cities, even the right-hand man of the nation’s most powerful Democrat might not have the pull to match longtime local power brokers. In Illinois, for instance, taxi companies hired Daley & Georges, where former Chicago Mayor Richard Daley’s brother Michael is a principal, to lobby on their behalf. They also hired The Roosevelt Group, which counts a former top Daley aide among its staff.

( Also on POLITICO: Uber uses lobbying to drive expansion)

But Uber CEO Travis Kalanick said Plouffe is the ideal person for the job. He “will be bringing the expertise, wisdom, a strategic mindset to the next phase of the Uber movement, shepherding us well beyond the challenges of the Big Taxi cartel, and into the brave new world of software-powered transportation,” Kalanick wrote in the blog post announcing Plouffe’s hire.

Jim Messina, the Obama 2012 campaign manager who connected Plouffe with the company, told POLITICO it is the “perfect marriage: You have the smartest strategist I have ever met, with one of the most innovative companies in America.”

Plouffe will start in September as senior vice president of policy and strategy for Uber, which operates in more than 200 cities in 44 countries across all six inhabited continents. The company’s smartphone app enables passengers to summon drivers in vehicles ranging from sedans to traditional taxis to limousines.

But ride-sharing may be only the beginning of the company’s ambitions. It has run promotions in which drivers deliver ice cream to passengers during the hot summer months, and on Tuesday announced it would start testing an on-demand service in Washington, D.C., promising swift delivery of pharmacy products like candy, deodorant and allergy medicine at the touch of a button.

But on Tuesday, Plouffe was on-message in describing the company’s core business.

“I believe passionately about the mission,” he said in an interview with Bloomberg TV. “Providing a transportation alternative should not be controversial. Saving lives, cutting down on drunk and distracted driving, creating jobs, helping parents and workers in businesses move around the city and live their lives in a more productive way. And I think ultimately this kind of progress, this kind of change, it’s hard to stand in the way of. People are going to put up a fight and we’re going to be prepared to make sure that we’re fighting for that transportation alternative that Uber represents.”

Kalanick hasn’t been shy in recent months about voicing his desire for a top political operative to join Uber, talking to multiple other past Obama aides such as former White House press secretaries Robert Gibbs and Jay Carney.

“Our roots are technology, not politics, writing code and rolling out transportation systems,” Kalanick wrote. “The result is that not enough people here in America and around the world know our story, our mission and the positive impact we’re having. Uber has been in a campaign but hasn’t been running one. That is changing now.”

Kalanick is understating Uber’s political capabilities. The company had already hired scores of local-level consultants and lobbyists to do battles in city halls and statehouses and has built up a D.C. office, recently hiring Brian Worth, a former aide to House Majority Leader Kevin McCarthy (R-Calif.), as its head of federal relations.

But Kalanick didn’t overplay the strength of his company’s nemesis: a taxi industry that, he wrote, has used “decades of political contributions and influence to restrict competition, reduce choice for consumers and put a stranglehold on economic opportunity for its drivers.”

The taxi companies essentially argue that Uber is a spoiled child, flush with venture capital funding and throwing tantrums about having to follow long-established safety and consumer protection rules. Plouffe’s hire didn’t change that impression.

“If Uber would simply obey the law, it wouldn’t have to concoct a make-believe conspiracy in which politicians somehow attempt to keep them out of their cities, and it wouldn’t have to hire an expensive political operative,” said Alfred LaGasse, the CEO of the Taxicab, Limousine & Paratransit Association. “By following the rules and meeting local public safety requirements like the rest of us, they wouldn’t need a ‘political campaign’ in the first place.”

Each new municipality or region where Uber launches has its own particular landscape, with status quos based on years of political compromises and fights among taxi drivers, passengers, medallion owners, politicians and regulators.

“They face a lot of political and regulatory obstacles,” said Joshua Schank, the president of the Eno Center for Transportation. “The biggest threat to their business model so far has been the regulatory challenges they face from state and local governments.”

In Illinois, for example, Uber’s opponents had the clout to win passage of legislation that the company says would kill its low-cost UberX service. Uber allies are lobbying Democratic Gov. Pat Quinn to veto the bill.

The Uber-Plouffe marriage unites a famously data-driven political consultant who spliced and diced the electorate with a company that automatically collects data on almost every part of its business, tracking drivers’ routes with GPS devices and asking passengers and drivers to rate one another.

Politicians on both sides of the aisle have recently tried to attach themselves to Uber’s brand of cool. Virginia Democratic Gov. Terry McAuliffe and Attorney General Mark Herring recently bragged about their role in winning Uber the temporary right to operate in the Old Dominion.

But Republicans especially have seen Uber’s embrace of free-market principles (embodied in the company’s surge pricing) and popularity as a way to woo young city-dwellers. Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) visited Uber’s D.C. headquarters earlier this year, and the RNC launched a petition in support of the company earlier this month.