Here’s a Romney group trying to make Obama look elitist and too cozy with rich donors by using footage of him singing Al Green’s “Let’s Stay Together.” It released today after the Obama campaign ran its own ad over the weekend featuring Romney absolutely butchering a full verse of “America the Beautiful.”
It doesn’t work. At all.
It doesn’t work because—let’s face it—Obama can actually sing; but, more importantly, everyone loved it when Obama did Al Green. It’s one of the things the country really likes about Obama. The economy is still in the shitter, you can make a case that his abuse of executive powers has been worse than Bush’s—but the guy is cool. And he’s fun. And he can sing. And he sings soul songs.
The ad attacks Obama for raising money from rich donors—but we all know every politician does that, we know Mitt raised way more than Obama in recent months, and we know Obama denounced the new Super PAC rules that make this kind of fundraising a necessity. If anything, when the ad says, “Lots of love for the donor class. What about the middle class?” it makes us think of Romney himself, and how hard he’s fighting for a tax structure that disproportionately rewards the rich.
Romney should take a cue from Team Obama’s attack on his sketchy behavior and possible felony around what he’s now calling his “retroactive retirement” from Bain Capital: If you’re going to run an attack on a political opponent, don’t attack that which you yourself are doing even more.
Check out both ads below.