tough? no. none whatsoever. i think mitt romney and his campaign are being terribly dishonest. they re accusing the president of getting the work requirement out of welfare. he knows it s not true and yet he continues to spend a lot of money spreading that lie, quite frankly, it is a lie. you think the welfare ad is specifically targeting those working white class workers that we all know about in ohio? i think it s not so subtle racism. they don t want to come out and say certain things. in my judgment i m speaking for myself, not for the obama administration, but i ve seen this playbook before where they try to drive wedges between people. the problem with this effort, though, chuck, is it s a lie and the media has looked at this carefully and they ve said it s a lie and the romney campaign continues to do it.
with the romney camp surveys showing that white working class voters who backed obama in 2008 have moved to romney in recent weeks, quote, almost certainly because of the welfare ad. i mean, and the journal goes on to sort of break down these sort of coded words, generational apathy is a synonym for laziness. they slept all day means minorities are sleeping all day sitting on the couch as jonathan said. your reaction to that and also, i mean, is the country not bigger and better than that? do they not know can they not clearly see the strategy behind this? i think as long as politics are segregated and as long as different issues resonate differently with different ethnic groups, racial groups, class groups, it s going to be hard to ever have any issue, especially on something like welfare, to have any ad that s not going to resonate particularly with one group or another, and i think it s asking an awful lot for campaigns to say no, you should refrain from
because they re losing so badly among women an latinos and obviously among african-americans that the romney campaign has to maximize its turnout among particularly white male working class voters. they already have a big lead over obama among that group. they need to expand their lead in order to win this election. and that s why they re going to the well things like this welfare ad. obama is not doing anything to undermine work requirements that were in bill clinton s 1996 welfare reform program. the fact checkers have all agreed, this ad is completely inaccurate. why are they running it, joe, if not trying to appeal to people s fear about well wifare and tap some of those themes? it s not fair about welfare. what bill clinton did that was good is he had a requirement for people to perform some kind of
said. the national journal had a story ron forny wrote a piece about the campaign playing the race card. let me read you this quote. the welfare issue generally speaking triggers anger in white blue collar voters that is easily directed towards democrats. this information comes from senior gop strategists who have worked both for president obama and romney. a senior gop pollster has said he has shared with the romney camp showing that white working class voters who backed obama in 2008 have moved to romney in recent weeks almost certainly because of the welfare ad. now, this is disturbing. playing knowingly to some biases. you ve run and won as a governor in pennsylvania. you ve come pained amongst white working class people. you do not have to campaign this
let s move on to another interpretation. here s what i know. i know that everybody, democrat and republican, campaign and noncampaign, has been focus grouping like crazy among undecided, working class white women. right. especially in places like ohio. but in every swing state, and what i m told is that the republicans found, to their surprise, over recent weeks, that the welfare ad really worked with those women. now, they were surprised, because women don t, as often, respond on the welfare issue, but at a time when everybody s strapped, when everybody s struggling, old resentments resurface. that s my interpretation of what s happening. now, wait a minute, the romney people saw that, and they re defending and using and driving, with money, an ad that every fair every fair analyst, every fact checker from the every fact checker has said is just factually wrong. an ad that you just sat here and admitted that white women,