One of Mitt’s advisors–hiding his own identity, but not his affiliation with the campaign of a man who has a car elevator–just said this:
The adviser, granted anonymity to criticize a press corps the campaign still relies on every day, went on to blame a “green room, green zone kind of divide,” saying the national press, most of whom live in New York or DC, “pockets of prosperity,” are isolated from the realities of the harsh economy — and therefore, unable to grasp Romney’s message.
Instead, they are preoccupied by concerns akin to war reporters relaxing in the green zone: “Too much chlorine in the pool, the parties are going on too late, why can’t we get the right flavors of Haagen Dazs? Most people aren’t living in that world.” [my emphasis]
It is a fair criticism. Most of the reporters following Romney around have DC or NY as their base. So they either live in a world that has benefited from 11 years of massive government stimulus or has been bailed out for the last 4 years. And that hurts their coverage of economic matters. Moreover, because most live in a town for which the primary industry is politics, they cover it as politics, the horse race.
Now, Mitt doesn’t happen to have a house in NY or DC. Rather, his sense of place–his view of the economy–comes from his bank accounts in the Cayman Islands and Bermuda, purchased with profits made from looting the drivers of prosperity and hiding them behind a veil of cowardice. That’s the place from which Mitt views the economy.
And so it’s not surprising his advisors don’t understand that, after seeing Mitt boast of creating $9/hour jobs even while admitting those jobs don’t provide a living wage, voters have begun to change their mind about whether Mitt is better for the economy than Obama. It’s not just that reporters are reporting on Mitt’s gaffes and lies. It’s also that the people who do live in the real economy are none too impressed by a guy whose advice for people working in precisely the kind of job Mitt has created is “to pray.”
That is, as distanced from the real economy as campaign reporters may be, Mitt and his team are even further divorced from the real world. So they don’t even realize that two different sets of people are turning away from their campaign: the reporters, based on campaign fuck-ups, and real people, based on a solid sense of what could turn around their lived economic struggles.