I hate to give Jennifer Rubin a ‘sad,’ but the Obama campaign doesn’t take advice from her or put any stock in her efforts to gauge the effectiveness of political messaging by Googling “Bain Backlash.” Ms. Rubin has been off on a little tangent lately, making lists of the five or ten reasons why attacking Mitt Romney about his vulture capitalism is a loser, or has lost, won’t win, is dumb, will backfire, isn’t working, etc.
She should take a closer look at the Obama operation. There’s a better than nil chance that the Obama campaign already knows the best message to send to a middle-aged Jersey-born, Berkeley-educated, Jewish woman with distinctly Likudist attitudes about Israel. If she’s not careful, she might just find herself thinking Obama is a better bet than Romney. Either way, she may get exposed to messaging designed distinctly for her.
The attacks on Bain are going on in a general sense, which is to say that the president and (most of) his surrogates are talking about it. But they’re testing to see which demographics are moved on the issue and the best way to deliver the message to each distinct group.
While Rubin tries to convince her readers that the Obama campaign is committing some blunder, they’re actually doing research and testing research that they’ve already done. This campaign makes very few mistakes. And all their mistakes are data for the next go-round.
But another way of looking at it is less empirical in nature. If Jennifer Rubin is squealing like a stuck pig, then you’re on the right track.