A new piece in New York Magazine revels that the head of Carl Rove's Super PAC American Crossroads made a stunning admission that the Radical Right's messaging has run into a major obstacle. The narrative Obama is putting forward that preferential treatment of the wealthy needs to be corrected is resonating with American swing voters. Voters who see that the Republicans are demanding even more sacrifices from the middle class to fund a new package of tax cuts for the wealthy.
The Obama-Romney Confidence Gap
By Jonathan Chait
Obviously, campaigns always strive to convey confidence, with even the slightest hints of pessimism seen as potentially unleashing a self-defeating cycle of doom.
So this admission, from the director of the Karl Rove–affiliated Republican Super-PAC “American Crossroads,” is unusual and telling:
Mr. Law said, Crossroads research suggests that Mr. Obama’s campaign has started to gain traction among critical swing voters by arguing that Republicans, including Mr. Romney, favor an “economic plutocracy” in which middle-class voters can no longer count on financial security, even though they work hard and play by the rules.
“His argument is: ‘The reason you feel bad is not because I’ve been an inadequate president but because the rules of the game are stacked against you,’ ” Mr. Law said. Calling it a “dystopian vision,” he added, “that narrative has some gravitational pull.”
In other words, their research shows that Obama’s campaign to frame the economic debate is working. It’s genuinely quite rare for campaigns (or, in this case, quasi-campaigns) to make that sort of confession.
Of course American Crossroads is busy looking for the best way to undermine Obama's message by carpet bombing the airwaves with its ads as it did so successful re framing the narrative in 2010. This is an admission that they face a more difficult task this year flying into the face of what many Americans have experienced in their own lives or seen friends and loved ones grapple with. American Crossroads' goal of savaging Barack Obama will more difficult to achieve but its still possible.