Obama Super PAC Not Jumping Off the Anti-Bain Train

Here's a new ad from Obama-supporting Super PAC, Priorities USA…

Wait a minute! That almost looked like it was hitting Mitt Romney for all the destruction that he and his company Bain Capital did to the companies they acquired. But… but that doesn't make any sense. Bill Clinton and Cory Booker told us all that using Bain as a cudgel against Mitt Romney was wrong. This must be a mistake, right? They can't be doing this on purpose, can they?

"While criticism of Romney's business record may not resonate with elites, it is clearly resonating with the actual voters who will decide this election," [Priorities USA strategist Bill] Burton writes. "Middle class Americans across this country are concerned about Romney's record of profiting from bankruptcies and are affected by the stories of people like Loris Huffman and Pat Wells who lost everything so that Romney could make millions."…

Burton's memo lists a series of data points that he says suggest the Bain message is starting to sink in — and has the potential to do real damage to Romney over time. The consulting firm Purple Strategies found in a poll that 47 percent of voters agree with the statement that private equity acquisitions lead to an unfair result: "Investors walk off with big returns, and working folks get stuck holding the bag." Only 38 percent agreed with a more upbeat characterization of private equity.

I don't know. Attacking candidates for making business decisions which undermine the well-being of entire social ecosystems seems kind of un-American. Can't we just go back to making speculative jabs about how foreign-y people's names sound?

(via Slate)

Tags: Advertising, Bain Capital, Barack Obama, Mitt Romney