Team Obama: Flushing Itself Down the Drain

From Stephen Green at PJM:

How’s that War on Capital going, Mr. President? Not too good, you say? Not even within your own party? Really? Really:

Booker is not the only Democrat to question the aggressive, negative portrayal of Romney’s work in private equity. Former Tennessee Rep. Harold Ford Jr. said today he agreed with “the substance” of Booker’s comments and “would not have backed out.”

“I agree with him, private equity is not a bad thing. Matter of fact, private equity is a good thing in many, many instances,” the Democrat said in a separate appearance on MSNBC earlier in the day.


Former Obama administration economic adviser Steven Rattner made similar comments last week, calling a new Obama campaign TV ad attacking Romney’s role in the bankruptcy of a Bain-owned steel company “unfair.”

And here’s former DNC Chairman and PA Governor Ed Rendell from another story:

And Rendell joined the chorus of criticism of Obama’s attacks on finance, whose leaders have written checks to many members of both parties.

“I think they’re very disappointing,” Rendell said of the ads attacking Bain. “I think Bain is fair game, because Romney has made it fair game. But I think how you examine it, the tone, what you say, is important as well.”

The War on Women, the Life of Julia, the War on Capital… they’ve even given Joe Biden extra lead on his leash. Others have called this campaign tone deaf, or accused Obama of having a tin ear. But it looks to me like there’s something deeper, something fundamentally wrong in the West Wing.

When a soldier in Vietnam wanted out, he might shoot himself in the foot on purpose. But what do you call it when somebody shoots himself in the foot, again and again, on accident? It beggars belief that a campaign crew that was firing on all cylinders against Hillary and then McCain just four years ago, could have become so incompetent. It’s not as if Romney is a stellar candidate with a whirlwind of popular support, causing Team Obama to make all these unforced errors. No, they just keep putting up loser after loser. Axelrod’s crew can’t even maintain control of their own lame hashtag games on Twitter.

It’s almost as if there is something psychologically mixed up about the Obama campaign, a willful streak of self-destruction. They’re running a race based on public tantrums, like a messed-up emo kid who cuts his flesh or pulls his hair to protest just how unfair it all is. And we do hear an awful lot about unfairness from this Administration.

It’s enough to make me suspect they have a clue in the White House, they have real numbers they aren’t showing us, that we really are this close to the fiscal cliff. Really, all it would take is for the bond markets to lose confidence, and — boom! — we’re Greece. Believe me, this is not the crew to inspire continued confidence in the bond markets.

Maybe on some level they want to lose, to get out of Washington before Barack Obama becomes the next Herbert Hoover.

That’s my theory. What’s yours?