Back to Ohio
by digby
I recall getting a little bit agitated over the Corey Booker and Bill Clinton “gaffes” about private equity and asking someone I knew would know if the Obama campaign was going to back off its clearly effective Bain line. I was told in no uncertain terms that they were not. All the data showed it was a devastating attack.
And it worked, in Ohio at least:
This article in TNR goes into all the other factors, which include a fired up Democratic base in the wake of the oddball John Kasich’s missteps with unions and the auto bailout among other things. But I have to believe this non-stop attack on Romney’s Bain background was the real put away.
And the right wingers really can’t complain. They’ve spend decades trying to pry the white working class away from the Democrats and largely succeeded using cultural wedge issues. But this time they blew it. They nominated the little man on the Monopoly box for president at a time of serious economic angst. I still can’t believe they did it.
Apparently they forgot that these guys may not like hippies and feminazis (and a lot of them don’t much care for blacks either) but if there’s one type they really, really don’t like it’s the wealthy owner who looks down on them. And that’s Mitt. He oozes it. After years and years of those guys coming to town and shutting down the plant and the factory and the warehouse and shipping the jobs overseas, there’s just no way they’re going to vote for one.
It’s not as if the Republicans had a lot to choose from, to be sure. But picking a vulture capitalist and expecting white working class voters to enthusiastically vote for him was plain old hubris.
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