You suck

Like I said earlier, 2012 is a post-modern pageant in sucking so badly I refuse to believe it's anything other than intentional. 

Labor and President Obama haven’t always seen to eye. But AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka says he couldn’t be happier with the way the campaign is shaping up.

“I think the president’s making the case right now that he should be making — that this is about two different types of economy,” Trumka told reporters Thursday at a breakfast hosted by the Christian Science Monitor.

Except, no, the President is doing no such thing. In fact, he's taking pains to specifically avoid making that argument and is sounding like a complete doofus as a result.

Barack Obama is one of the few politicians with the communication skills to explain this to middle America, but he’s refusing to go there, probably because he’s still hoping for a post-election rapprochement with Wall Street. He wants to go after Bain Capital, but not private equity in general; he wants to go after Mitt Romney’s missing tax returns, but not the tax returns of all people like Mitt Romney.

That makes him look weak and indecisive, and it makes his message confusing.

In the meantime, there are going to be a lot of these battles-by-proxy, in which surrogates like Harry Reid try to egg Romney into releasing his tax returns. There’s no doubt the returns are embarrassing – otherwise Romney would have released them by now. And there’s no doubt that Romney should take heat for not releasing those returns. But there’s enough information already for Barack Obama to tell a powerful story about wealth and privilege to most ordinary Americans. He just doesn’t want to tell it.

Maybe if we all clap louder...