Political reporter Joe Williams and Molly Ball, political correspondent for The Atlantic, join “Viewpoint” host Eliot Spitzer to discuss Obama’s campaign strategy in light of this month’s anemic job growth and the seeming economic stagnation it represents.
Spitzer asks why Obama doesn’t more aggressively lay the blame for the economy on the GOP and the George W. Bush administration. But merely acknowledging that the economy is bad, Williams answers, can be a minefield: “If you say things are lousy, that’s the next Web commercial that the Romney campaign is going to run. So he has to find some way to walk that deft line between ‘things are getting better’ — although not quite as quickly as we’d like — and acknowledging the reality that there are still a lot of people who are hurting.”
Attacking Romney for having no agenda is also a no-go, says Ball. “Obama is basically running against the Republican Congress and George Bush. He has to associate Romney with them, and in doing so he has to say that Romney does have an agenda — he has this extreme right agenda.”
