Why Obama's Bain Attacks Are Actually Working

Barack Obama's attacks on Mitt Romney's Bain Capital tenure are working, especially in swing states, according to a recent New York Times article—even though Democrats' populist attacks tend to flop, and even though many Democrats, like Cory Booker, oppose them. Their thinking is simple, Michael Wolff explains in the Guardian: "Why bite the hand that feeds you?" There's been a strange realignment in recent years that made Democrats "the party of Goldman Sachs … the snob party ... while the Republicans, remarkably, became the salt-of-the-earth lot." But Romney's nomination changes all that.

Romney is "a figure straight out of the Republicans' long-ago, country-club, preppy, pink-pants, stockbroker era," a caricature so vivid "that he resets the cultural timeline of both parties." For a while, laborers believed that capital's interests were their interests, that self-interested firms like Bain helped us all. "But suddenly, the music stopped and, in something of a sight gag, Mitt Romney was left standing." Now we know that only Mitt and company are rich, and "few people are ever going to confuse themselves for Mitt Romney." Click to read his entire column. (More Mitt Romney stories.)