In a July 12 piece for Salon entitled “Will Obama’s Bain blows land?” Tom Schaller, professor of political science, analyzed the president’s emerging strategy of focusing on Mitt Romney’s history with the investment firm Bain Capital. Schaller expressed doubts that these critiques will work. ” After all, Obama’s populist record is mixed: undeniably strong on some issues (expanded healthcare coverage, student loans and payroll taxes), and spotty if not weak on others (Wall Street prosecutions and reform, extension of Bush tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans and job outsourcing),” he wrote.
Schaller concludes the piece by writing that “even if the president, given his own economic record over the past three-plus years, struggles to advance economic populist critiques along policy lines, the Obama campaign will mount a powerful populist critique of Romney as a businessman and politician who literally embodies all that’s wrong economically with America right now.”
Tags: CAHSS, PoliticalScience
