Frank Rich (New Yorker): Democratic panic is premature
“Is it time for Democrats to panic?” was the lead of a front-page Washington Post story Wednesday morning. Is it?
Not in June. The proximate source of this alarm is a memo written by James Carville and the pollster Stanley Greenberg, and seconded by another old Clinton hand, Douglas Schoen, a persistent Obama basher who months ago called for the president to abdicate after one term and let Hillary run in his place. The point of their angst is that Obama needs a new economic message, more like Clinton’s. Perhaps. More effective might be a stronger anti-Romney message. The Republican candidate avoids the press (Fox News aside), largely ducks the public, and offers only standard issue party boilerplate as his own “jobs” plan. The question is when and how the Obama campaign will knock this brittle opponent off his anodyne memorized talking points, out of his bubble and into interaction with the real world. The new ABC News/Washington Post poll shows that among “swing-voting independents” the economic plans of both candidates are more or less equally despised, with a 38 percent favorable rating for Obama’s and 35 percent for Romney’s. That’s a serious opening for Obama.
But the Romney camp has done quite well in throwing Obama off course by seizing on his “private sector is doing fine” line of last week to brand him as “so out of touch,” in Romney’s repeated words.
As the Obama campaign has pointed out, Romney is also out of touch when he knocks the president for saying we need more firemen, policemen, and teachers. Most Americans actually think we do need more such public employees, and if it weren’t for the Obama stimulus we’d have even fewer of them.
http://nymag.com/daily/intel/2012/06/frank-rich-democrats-premature-panic.html
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