Longtime Democratic Strategist James Carville and President Barack Obama are seeing eye to eye, at least for this week.
“If I would be advising the [Obama] campaign, I’d say keep on rolling,” Carville told the Rev. Al Sharpton on Politics Nation on Monday.
Just last week, Carville told Rachel Maddow that the middle class needed — and would vote for — a candidate who inspired and campaigned on the issues important to the middle class, but Carville, whose latest book is It’s The Middle Class, Stupid!, said he’s seeing a turnaround with Obama’s campaign.
“They’re really starting to put the middle class front and center,” Carville said. “I was critical of the messaging when it was starting to say the economy was doing better and these things, because I don’t think people feel that yet.”
On Thursday, President Obama acknowledged his own failings in driving the political narrative on CBS This Morning.
“The mistake of my first couple of years was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right. And that’s important. But … the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times. I need to do a better job of that in my second term — … explaining, but also inspiring.” Carville commended the President for his awareness. “I think the criticism was legitimate and his acknowledging it was legitimate, he said. “That’s why Franklin Roosevelt had Fireside chats.” A Buzzfeed report yesterday also focused on Obama’s recent on the road strategy, contrasting the president’s “gritty engagment tour” appealing to voters on bus tours with Romney’s “cool and vague [campaigning style], staying largely off the trail and out of the weeds.” These two campaigns are nearly polar opposites from the traditional reelection campaign roles, where an incumbent runs a “Rose Garden campaign,” from the Oval Office, the report noted, adding, “the president is trying to connect where Romney cannot.”
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