Joan Walsh: When the dogs won’t eat the dog food

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/2012/09/28/when_the_dogs_wont_eat_the_dog_food/

When the dogs won’t eat the dog food
Mitt Romney is losing not because of a bad campaign but because voters think he would make a bad president
By Joan Walsh


I know, “the dogs won’t eat the dog food” is kind of a cliché, but maybe because of Mitt Romney’s Seamus I couldn’t resist it. It refers to attempts to blame marketing for a product not selling, when the problem is the product itself. Romney is the product the voters aren’t buying – the dog food, if you will.

Journalists and political operatives are already engaged in a pre-mortem about Romney’s awful campaign, and what killed it: The never-ending tax controversy? Bain job-killing? His Olympics stumble? A mediocre convention? Bad judgment in slamming the president on Libya? Those remarks about the “47 percent”? Politico came out and told the truth today: “In the end, it’s Mitt.”

Mostly anonymous Republicans (such courage) dish the dirt on the candidate they say they love. The silliest thing in the Politico piece came from an anonymous “top Romney official” who called Romney a “lousy candidate” who’s “highly qualified to be president.” Actually, in our country, sir (it’s almost certainly a “sir”), voters decide who’s highly qualified to be president. And they’re not sold on Romney.

snip//

I said long ago that Romney “is the poster boy for the top 1 percent,” and that it would hurt him with struggling voters. But I didn’t know how much it would hurt him. In the end, maybe he’d have survived coming off like a cross between Thurston Howell III and Montgomery Burns, if we hadn’t heard his remarks about “the 47 percent.” Together, his sheltered wealth, high finance career and plutocrat’s sneer are making it nearly impossible for him to be elected.

Nearly impossible. Not impossible. The other side has so much money and so few scruples these last six weeks could get uglier. We don’t know the toll voter suppression laws will take. And forget about those newfangled laws, there’s old-fashioned GOP voter suppression – robocalls and fliers giving voters the wrong day as Election Day or changing their polling place, voter intimidation, or a shortage of ballots or voting machine in dense Democratic districts.

But for now, Mitt Romney is in a deep hole, and he’s got no choice but to keep digging, until Election Day. Seamus jokes aside, if the dogs don’t eat the dog food, the product disappears. Paul Ryan seems to be campaigning harder for his House seat. I’m not sure what Romney does after November if the job he’s been pursuing for arguably a decade eludes him.

[spooky3]

1. As several on MSNBC have said, being wealthy is not a disqualifier. Instead, it's

indicating that as President you would act primarily or exclusively to benefit the wealthy and powerful at the expense of everyone else that's the problem.