The Washington Post is reporting that President Obama and his campaign team have decided to turn the vitriolic public sentiment against Wall Street into a central tenet of their strategy.
The new strategy sets up a powerful line of attack: portraying Mitt Romney, the founder of Bain Capital, as a wealthy Wall Street sympathizer. The Obama team hopes to keep centrist independents from supporting the GOP contender by painting him with the Wall Street brush.
“We intend to make it one of the central elements of the campaign next year,” Obama senior adviser David Plouffe said. “One of the main elements of the contrast will be that the president passed Wall Street reform and our opponent and the other party want to repeal it.”
“I’m pretty confident 12 months from now, as people make the decision about who to go vote for, the gut check is going to be about, ‘Who would make decisions more about helping my life than Wall Street?’ ” Plouffe concluded.
Anger at the financial system is at a high level. A recent poll found that 68% of independents and 68% of Republicans say they have unfavorable impressions of the big financial institutions.
