Also in today’s Morning Jolt . . .

Stealing From the Obama-Axelrod Narrative Management Playbook

So, a few quick thoughts on the “reinvention of the GOP” topic . . .

One of the things the Democrats do well is identify something that a wide swath of people think is a problem — some nut job shot up a kindergarten class! — and then quickly propose some legislation to “do something about it.” Now, we’re left to point out that the legislation in question won’t really solve the problem it’s supposed to, and it will create its own problems, but by that point we’re following a familiar media playbook; they’re the ones who care and who are trying to DO SOMETHING and we’re the carping obstructionists who get all wrapped up in the details.

The upside of our annoying focus on details and pesky wariness about unforeseen consequences is that we’re much less likely to end up passing legislation that accidentally bans police officers from carrying guns with more than seven rounds, as Democrats in New York recently did.

So, why can’t we find something broadly recognized as a problem and offer our own this-must-pass-immediately-or-you-don’t-care-about-the-problem ultimatum?

Here’s one of the first examples that comes to mind: What is the single least popular bit of federal spending? Whatever it is, introduce and vote on a bill to zero it out immediately.

Alternatively, what is the federal agency with the single worst rate of waste and inefficiency? Introduce and pass a bill to cut its budget in half. Turn those into crusades, hold press conferences, get the lawmakers out on the Sunday shows to invoke it as a “basic first step to getting our fiscal house in order”, and so on. It doesn’t matter if the actual dollar amount involved is minuscule in comparison to the debt and this year’s deficit; the point is to A) get Americans used to the idea that government spending can be cut, B) persuade Americans that cracking down on wasteful spending is worthwhile, and C) test the Democrats to see if they’re dumb enough to go out and defend the worst offenders.

The worst-case scenario is that the Democrats go along with it, like when they quickly capitulated over ACORN funding. But in that case, we’ve managed to actually cut a little government waste — not such a bad outcome.

Let the Democrats dismiss this maneuver as a stunt; what exactly would we call Dianne Feinstein displaying 10 assault rifles during her press conference on the assault-weapons ban?

My nomination? All of the U.S. Department of Agriculture grants to various industries to promote American products. Looking at examples like this one . . .

Leo Ray, owner of Fish Processors of Idaho, learned Friday that his business won a $300,000 grant from the U.S. Department of Agriculture to promote his caviar nationwide. Ray received a Value-Added Producer Grant, designed to help farmers advertise new products and build economies in rural communities.

Various industries can promote their own darn products; there’s no reason for U.S. taxpayers to pick up the tab.

Looking through Tom Coburn’s catalogue of wasteful spending . . . Okay, Democrats, we will raise taxes. Let’s declare that professional sports leagues do not qualify as “nonprofits.” That’s $91 million in new tax revenue right there.

Could you imagine if GOP lawmakers in Congress suddenly started pounding the table and insisting that NFL commissioner Roger Goodell* and NHL commissioner Gary Bettman pay their fair share? You would see the GOP suddenly the hero of the world of sports talk radio, that’s for sure.

Keep in mind, the Obama agenda for the coming year is to bring up issue after issue that either divides Republicans or leaves them defending an unpopular position: on all the spending fights, he’s going to paint the opposition as misers who want to toss old people into the cold and cut off help for families with disabled children. On climate change, we’re flat-earth types who defend polluters and don’t want to stop natural disasters. On immigration, we’ll be painted as xenophobic racists who fly into paranoid rages when Mexican restaurants don’t immediately offer us the mild salsa with our chips. On every issue, the theme is the same: “We all agree that X is a problem [even though not all of us really do], and we have a solution, and the GOP is being obstructionist.”

Wouldn’t it be nice to interrupt this parade of Axelrod focus-group-tested wedge issues with some issues of our own? Kurt Schlichter had the right approach:

Obama is now talking about taxing the successful even more by eliminating deductions. Hand him another big goose egg. He got his tax increases — you need to be out of the revenue increase business. How about the House pass a payroll tax cut, paid for by slashing corporate welfare to Obama’s Hollywood buddies and his green energy scam cronies?

Spending cuts? Obama doesn’t get a say. Sequestration is going to happen unless the GOP agrees to change it. That’s a $1.2 trillion cut. Let it happen, and let Secretary Hagel deal with the defense cuts. Obama loses again unless you save him.

And guns — talk about a golden opportunity to defeat Obama while also helping set the stage for a Democrat wipe-out in 2014! Obama and his progressive pals are giddy with the idea that Newtown will let them jam through a whole slew of Second Amendment-trashing measures before everyone starts thinking again. If Obama’s actually foolish enough to proceed — and I am not sure he is — he’s setting himself up for a huge loss.

GOP, remember Napoleon’s admonition to never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake. Let Obama try and force the red state Democrat senators to come out against guns. Let the Democrats tear themselves up while we watch and gobble popcorn.

UPDATE: In the original version, I stepped into the time machine and referred to “NFL commissioner Paul Tagliabue.” Hey, be glad I didn’t say “Pete Rozelle”!

Hey, young voters. This is David Axelrod, the chief strategist of the president you voted for, 60 percent to 37 percent: “In NFL post-game: an ad for shoot ‘em up video game. All for curbing weapons of war. But shouldn’t we also quit marketing murder as a game?”

“Shoot ‘em up video games” are played by millions of people, selling millions of copies. There have been 62 mass shootings since 1982, according to one count. So we have an activity that is not proven to stir a murderous impulse in its users (certainly some mass killers did not play video games, i.e, Nidal Hassan); roughly one million “shoot ‘em up video games” are sold for each mass shooter.

What’s more, it appears what is really irking Axelrod is the television commercial for the shoot ‘em up video game.

Now, one could argue that after an event as horrific as Newtown, companies should refrain from airing ads that depict violence – less out of a fear of triggering copycats or encouraging violence than simple sensitivity to the mood of the viewing public.

But what appears to be bothering Axelrod is the act of shooting one’s opponent in a video game, and the notion that the video-game version of that act that could somehow stir a desire to do the same in real life. But for 99.999 percent of the population, games are games – otherwise players of the “Sim” series would be filled with delusions of all-encompassing divine power, Super Mario players would jump atop mushrooms, players of the “Risk” board game would conquer nations, and those who play “Monopoly” would become corporate raiders.

President Obama and his team would never seize upon the news of a deadly attack in the Muslim world to attack a political opponent, right?

Eh, let’s look back to December 2007, when Benazir Bhutto’s assassination became a big topic in the Democratic presidential primary, just days before the Iowa caucus: “Three hours after news of Bhutto’s slaying broke, Obama delivered a withering rebuke of Clinton’s experience, depicting her lengthy political resume as a hindrance to solving big problems, including crises abroad.”

Then there was the comment from David Axelrod:

Axelrod, a senior Obama strategist, was more direct, linking the Pakistani crisis to the different positions that Clinton and Obama took on the Iraq war in 2002, when Clinton voted to authorize it in the U.S. Senate, and Obama, then an Illinois state senator, spoke out against it.

“Obama opposed the war in Iraq explicitly because he feared it would divert our attention from al-Qaeda, Pakistan, the whole region,” Axelrod said. “It underscores the fact that you have to have a president who understands the world, who is going to analyze these events, and who will chart the right course, counter to the conventional thinking.”

Surely Obama would rebuke his longtime aide, arguing that the killing of an anti-Taliban Pakistan leader by extremists shouldn’t be used as a political cudgel, and that hours after such an atrocity is an inappropriate time to make such heated political charges, right? Of course not.

OBAMA: : He was asked — he was asked very specifically about the argument that the Clinton folks were making that somehow this was going to change the dynamic of politics in Iowa. First of all, that shouldn’t have been the question. The question should be, how is this going to impact the safety and security of the United States, not how is it going to affect a political campaign in Iowa. His response was simply to say that if we are going to talk politics, then the question has to be, who has exercised the kind of judgment that would be more likely to lead to better outcomes in the Middle East and better outcomes in Pakistan. His argument was simply that Iraq has fanned anti-American sentiment and it took our eye off the ball, to the extent that there are those who are claiming now that their experience somehow makes them superior to deal with these issues. I think it’s important for the Americans people to look at the judgments they made in the past. And the experienced hands in Washington have not made particularly good judgments when it comes to dealing with these problems. That’s part of the reason we’re in this circumstance.

Obama was actually right then, and the griping about Romney now is wrong. If you believe that different parties and different leaders will give you different policies, and that different policies will give you different results, then these sorts of things have to be discussed.

If a presidential candidate thinks that embassy statements “condemn[ing] the continuing efforts by misguided individuals to hurt the religious feelings of Muslims” suggest weakness, or that the United States believes that we believe that outraged protesters have legitimate reasons for their rage, or imply that the U.S. government has some sort of legal or censoring authority in these matters, he should say so. If he thinks that a too-optimistic view of the “Arab Spring” has left the administration to underestimate anti-American attitudes and threats to Americans overseas, he should say so. If he thinks that roughly $1 billion per year in foreign aid, and a proposed additional $1 billion in debt forgiveness for Egypt are bad ideas, he should say so.

Who knows, maybe President Obama will discuss these issues at tonight’s fundraiser at a private residence in Washington, D.C., the one that is closed to the press.

Or maybe he’ll discuss his thoughts on the news that “Muslim Brotherhood secretary general Mahmoud Hussein called for protests ‘in front of the mosques of the whole country … to show the whole Egyptian people’s anger.’”

David Axelrod, two weeks ago:

“It’s a great concern,” Axelrod said in an interview with WJLA ABC 7, a station owned by POLITICO’s corporate parent. “People are writing $10 million checks in one fell swoop to these super PACs — in many cases, they’re undisclosed.”

Yesterday, the pro-Obama SuperPAC “Priorities USA Action” filed a report saying they were spending $3.3 million, the third-largest sum of the entire campaign cycle, on television advertising. Much of it will be to fund the airing of this ad:

The fourth- and fifth-highest sums of this cycle also come from Priorities USA Action; $3.1 million spent in a report filed June 5 and $2.24 million spent in a report filed mid-May.

Of course, the two highest expenditures of the cycle were from the pro-Romney SuperPAC, Restore Our Future, Inc., which spent $4.9 million on ads hitting Newt Gingrich back in late January. The single largest expenditure of any SuperPAC in the cycle came about ten days ago, when Restore Our Future committed $7.1 million for television advertising, much of it on this ad:

In short, even though Obama’s SuperPAC ally is spending less than Romney’s allies, in the month of June the margin is pretty close — $6.4 million for anti-Romney ads to $7.1 million for anti-Obama ads.

Over on the home page, I dive into the spreadsheets to look at how the Obama campaign has spent $148.7 million so far. One of the fun sections was the food:

FOOD: It is claimed that Napoleon said that “armies march on their stomachs,” and the same is true for campaigns. The Obama campaign spent $96,389.41 on catering/facilities. The largest single expenditure in that category was $13,128.72 to Big Delicious Planet catering in Chicago. The campaign also spent $2,571.27 at a Subway sandwich shop in Columbus, Ind.

Nationwide, the Obama campaign has clear preferences for coffee; it spent $552.67 at Dunkin’ Donuts, $389.85 at Einstein Bros. Bagels, $229.22 at Starbucks, and only $183.15 at Caribou Coffee. The campaign has spent $239.38 at 7-Eleven.

The Obama campaign appears to run on pizza: $2,084.37 went to Domino’s Pizza, $1,774.78 went to Pizzanno’s Pizza, $1,167.45 went to Papa John’s, $834.03 went to Pizza Hut, and $362 went to Little Caesars.

(One hopes Michelle Obama won’t find out that some Obama campaign staffer in Winston-Salem, N.C., spent $239.39 at Krispy Kreme.)

That’s right, the Obama campaign has spent $6,222 on pizza so far.

And if you have ever wondered how much David Axelrod charges the Obama campaign:

The man most publicly associated with the Obama campaign, the president’s longtime strategist David Axelrod, is not directly paid by the campaign. Instead, his firm, Axelrod Strategies LLC, is listed as receiving 24 payments totaling $181,582, with most months including a $15,000 payment for “consulting/professional services/media” and then a separate payment of a three- or four-digit sum to cover travel and lodging costs.

UPDATE: A Republican chuckles that the Obama campaign is spending a lot of money at Dunkin’ Donuts, owned in part by . . . Mitt Romney’s old firm, Bain Capital.

I’ll be on Chuck Todd’s Daily Rundown on MSNBC this morning, towards the end of the show on the roundtable. Topics to be determined . . .

From the final Morning Jolt until June 25:

Is Obama Blowing This Election Before Our Eyes?

There will inevitably be twists and turns in the coming months, but . . . is this thing starting to feel like a foregone conclusion to anybody else? I just keep waiting for some other shoe to drop, some much better line of argument from Obama, some genuinely devastating ad, some new bit of evidence that the Obama policies are working, and it feels like . . . fffft . . . One wet noodle after another.

Here’s a good question: When’s the last time President Obama came back from any point in his presidency? Probably the bin Laden kill, right? I look at the Gallup approval rating since the beginning, and it seems like Obama has been in the 40s since about April 2010 or so. Sometimes he’s in the high 40s, sometimes it’s in the low 40s. He’s at 46 percent approval, 48 percent disapproval right now. That disapproval rating has been in the 40s since late 2009 and hit 50-51 percent a few times last year.

Mind you, I don’t want to get overconfident, and after watching five straight presidential elections either go badly for Republicans or go down to the wire, the notion of a solid, strengthening GOP wave through the summer and autumn seems . . . odd and hard to process.

Bryan Preston:

There’s a zeitgeist in the air over the last few weeks, and the polls confirm it: President Obama is flailing as he comes to grips with campaigning to keep his job. Several of his 2008 states are now in play, including Ohio, Wisconsin, Nevada, Virginia and North Carolina. While he flails, he sinks, and Mitt Romney has emerged from a bruising primary battle looking like he could win.

The shift in the campaign is not happening by accident. The fact is, the RNC and the Romney campaign have come into the general election swinging, and swinging with great effect..

It has been less than a month since Mitt Romney officially clinched the GOP nomination by winning the Texas primary on May 29. But in the weeks since then, Obama has not had one single good day. From awful jobs numbers to the “private sector is doing fine” to the debacle in Wisconsin and the raw exposed divisions within the Democratic Party over his tactics and rhetoric, Obama has been suffering a flurry of terrors. He is looking like a loser for the first time in his career, and neither he nor David Axelrod seems to know what to do about it. The June 8 press conference was supposed to right their ship, but Obama’s private sector comment just made things worse, so less than a week later the nation gets treated to . . . yet another speech. We’ve seen this about as often as we’ve watch[ed] Gilligan’s Island re-runs in syndication. It won’t move the needle unless Obama does something dramatic, but that would cut into his “no drama Obama” schtick and might look desperate. Mitt Romney, meanwhile, looks relaxed on the campaign trail while his message is fostering zero friction among the GOP. Romney has not made the sale yet, but no one should expect him to this early. He just has to stay on message and stay on offense through the conventions, and then come out from there looking like a plausible president with ideas for fixing the economy.

Anyway, here’s how David Axelrod began his fundraising e-mail of last night:

This is a make-or-break moment for middle-class Americans — and anyone who cares needs to watch the speech President Obama made in Cleveland today.

Make-or-break moment? Dude, the middle-class Americans are like the Costa Concordia right now. Already broken. That moment passed. Now we’re looking at the rebuilding stage. The message from the Obama team is, ‘Careful, Mitt Romney would louse up this fantastic recovery we’re enjoying.’

So how was Obama’s big speech in Ohio greeted? Mediaite, bring us up to speed!

“I thought this, honestly, was one of the least successful speeches I’ve seen Barack Obama give in several years,” said Newsweek editor Jonathan Alter. “It was long winded. He had a good argument to make, and at the beginning of the speech he seemed to be making it in a fairly compelling way but then he lost the thread.”

Alter said he thought the speech was “way too long” and Obama had “lost the audience by the end.”

Daily Beast columnist and economist Zachary Karabell agreed with Alter, saying that the President opened the speech well, but quickly lost the plot.

When he went, sort of, away from offense and on to defense, ‘what we’ve done and what we’re going to do,’ it became unbelievably diffuse and, in some sense purely as a political phenomenon it was very ineffective in that respect because it very well characterized the opponents as ‘this is not going to work’ but it didn’t really give you the sense of what will.

MSNBC anchor Tamron Hall attempted to clarify the President’s points for her panelists, seeing that the conversation was rapidly spiraling into pointedly off-message territory. Hall said that Obama made a key point that a Romney administration will rely on a more laissez faire approach to tax policy which, in her opinion, would hurt the middle class.

Relax, Mr. President. You’ll always have Tamron.

The Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt looks at the parts of the Democratic party that aren’t as interested in adapting their agenda and worldview in order to win elections, some revealing comments in focus groups of frustrated former Obama voters, and then . . .

We Would Have Liked David Axelrod Eighteen Years Ago

Back in 1994, David Axelrod sounded like a really smart guy:

In 1994, Democrats faced a similar challenge, and a C-SPAN roundtable mulled the issue.

One of its members, Democratic consultant David Axelrod, sounded then a bit like the Clintonites do today.

“One of the interesting things about this is that as you cite these statistics that say the economy is improving, you almost do political damage to yourself. If you stand up and claim great progress you’re only frustrating this alienated middle class more,” Axelrod said.

The moderator, John Callaway, noted that Ronald Reagan had been able to talk up the economy in 1984, while George H. W. Bush had been unable to in 1992.

“Bush tastelessly did it often from the ninth hole and from the cigar boat and other places. And the impression you got was that he was out of touch,” Axelrod said.

“You still like to beat up on Bush?” Callaway asked.

“It’s the only thing we have left,” Axelrod responded.

Man, not even Young Axelrod’s a reliable surrogate for the Obama campaign.

Allahpundit savors this: “Enjoy as one of the masterminds of Hopenchange kneecaps his future self not once but twice in a 61-second span. Turns out it’s a bad idea to try to B.S. the public with economic optimism when they’re not feeling optimistic, and it’s a really bad idea to try to do it when you’re known for spending your leisure time engaged in the ultimate stereotypical rich-guy pastime. Eighteen years, a catastrophic global recession, and 100 rounds of golf later, here we are.”

I’m starting to wonder if the story of the 2012 campaign will be unforced errors. The Romney campaign takes Obama’s “doing fine” comment and turns it into a slam-dunk web video:

How long until the 30-second ads with this message?

Meanwhile, David Axelrod had a . . . challenging time with a yes-or-no question this morning on the Sunday shows:

Notice that Axelrod always says “we created 4.3 million private-sector jobs” instead of “the private sector created 4.3 million jobs.”

The optics of the day:

David Axelrod is insisting that results showing a 7-point Scott Walker win last night is bad news for Mitt Romney.

Bill Clinton said in a CNBC interview, “there’s a recession,” and his spokesman had to issue a statement explaining he didn’t really mean it.

The Greek government is declaring “government coffers could be empty as soon as July, shortly after this month’s pivotal elections. In the worst case, Athens might have to temporarily stop paying for salaries and pensions, along with imports of fuel, food and pharmaceuticals.”

Obama will spend today and tomorrow doing fundraisers in California.

And the RNC is showcasing Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s declaration that the Wisconsin recall would be a “dry run” of the Democrats get-out-the-vote operations.

It’s not that surprising that Obama and the Democrats are in trouble. What is surprising is that he and his fellow party leaders are absolutely convinced that they’re not in trouble.

David Axelrod just Tweeted: “Bad night in Boston…WI raises big questions for Mitt.”

He points to this article: “According to early, partial exit poll results, voters on Tuesday said by 51 percent to 45 percent that they would vote for Obama if the presidential election were being held today.”

So, he’s pointing to exit polls that had it “too close to call”; at this hour, Walker is ahead by nine percentage points.

9 – 6 = 3.

Remember, this is a state that Obama won by 14 percentage points in 2008.

For the Obama campaign and Democrats, it’s “Spotlight Romney as Governor” Day.

David Axelrod — you know, the political strategist who routinely attends national-security meetings — will be in Boston, to hold a press conference in front of the State House in Boston to discuss “Mitt Romney’s economic philosophy and his failed economic record in Massachusetts.” Axelrod will warn that under Romney, Massachusetts’s unemployment rate changed from 5.6 percent to 4.7 percent, and that if elected, Romney would inflict the same pain and suffering to all of America.

For the Romney campaign and Republicans, it’s “Spotlight Solyndra Day.” They’ve unveiled a 22-page briefing on the Solyndra scandal.

And, of course, a video:

On Morning Joe, Newark Mayor Cory Booker’s subsequent video explaining that he has no real quarrel with the tactics and methods of the Obama campaign is compared to a “hostage tape.”

Visit msnbc.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

On Twitter this morning, I’ve been… extending the metaphor.

“One image says it all: The flag of the seal of Newark, being burned by angry crowd of Obama staffers outside Booker’s embassy gates…  Ever since Shah Daley left the Obama camp, there has been fear that the radical young students had taken over the movement… Analysts note that in his hostage tape, Booker blinks in Morse code, ‘MY CITY STILL NEEDS A THRIVING FINANCIAL SECTOR.’ … A figure with ties to both the Obama camp and high finance, like Jon Corzine, may be permitted to visit Booker’s conscience in captivity…. The angry mob of Obama staffers is now chanting, “DOWN WITH THE GREAT LIEBERMAN,” an ancient figure associated with betrayal in their faith… In an ominous development for the fate of Booker’s conscience, Ayatollah Axelrod has declared it guilty of “apostasy against our deity.” When Booker’s conscience called the Bain attacks “crap” and “nauseating”, he committed blasphemy under the strict orthodoxy of Obamism… All across the country, candlelight vigils are beginning, with millions praying for the safe release of Cory Booker’s conscience.”

It’s best enjoyed while listening to the classic Nightline themes, found here.

In the first Morning Jolt of the week:

Suddenly David Axelrod Is Fuming a Christie-Esque ‘Booker!’

Newark Mayor Cory Booker… not only does he save people from burning buildings, not only does he shovel sidewalks, not only does he do hilarious videos with Chris Christie… he even calls them as he sees them, even if it really, really complicates life for the president of his party:

Mayor Cory A. Booker of Newark, a prominent Democrat enlisted as a surrogate for President Obama’s campaign, sharply criticized it on Sunday for attacking Mitt Romney’s work at the private equity firm Bain Capital.

Mr. Booker, speaking on the NBC program “Meet the Press,” made his comments in response to a television advertisement the president’s campaign unveiled last week. It portrays Mr. Romney, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, as someone who eliminated jobs for the sake of profits during his years running Bain Capital.

“I have to just say, from a very personal level, I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity,” Mr. Booker said. “To me, it’s just we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America, especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people are investing in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.”

“The last point I’ll make is this kind of stuff is nauseating to me on both sides,” Mr. Booker continued. “It’s nauseating to the American public. Enough is enough. Stop attacking private equity. Stop attacking Jeremiah Wright.”

Did you see what he just did there? He just put attacks on Romney’s years at Bain Capital up there with what the MSM deems the gold standard of unfair attacks, Jeremiah Wright. (Never-mind that a presidential candidate’s mentor being coo coo for cocoa puffs might be relevant to some voters. For that matter, Romney’s management style and judgment at Bain probably ought to be worth a look. But to blame him for every job lost from an investment that failed without crediting him for every job created from an investment that worked is an inane standard, and the vast majority of voters know this.)

And the angry lefties know that Booker just blew up one of their main attacks on Romney for the rest of the year. Whenever anyone in Obama-world mentions Bain between now and November, expect to hear a lot of, “Oh, this is a silly smear and everyone knows it, even Cory Booker wants the Obama campaign to drop these tired, baseless attacks…”

Brett LoGiurato tours the Left’s outrage and betrayal to Booker Sunday:

Cory Booker seemed to shock the left this morning on “Meet the Press.” Calling himself an “Obama surrogate,” he said this when asked about the Obama campaign’s attack ads this week on Mitt Romney’s record at Bain Capital:

“I’m not about to sit here and indict private equity. To me, we’re getting to a ridiculous point in America.

“Especially that I know I live in a state where pension funds, unions and other people invest in companies like Bain Capital. If you look at the totality of Bain Capital’s record, they’ve done a lot to support businesses, to grow businesses. And this, to me, I’m very uncomfortable with.”

Heads started to roll. Keith Olbermann tweeted that Booker “may have done progressive things, but he believes in nothing but Cory Booker.“ The left-heavy Think Progress went with an unflattering “Booker attacks Obama” headline for the “popular, progressive mayor” from Newark. 

Truth is, though, that Booker has always been thought of as something of a “moderate” or “centrist” Democrat, despite being perhaps their favorite rising star. (He’s going to either run to be New Jersey’s governor in 2013 or for one of its Senate seats in 2014.)

Here’s Cory Booker talking about the labels of Republican and Democrat, and how he wants neither to fully apply to him. 

Over at Salon, Steve Kornacki writes why this shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. 

Financial support from Wall Street and, more broadly speaking, the investor class has been key to Booker’s rise, and remains key to his future dreams.

That’s because Cory Booker was originally elected to the Newark mayor’s office on the strength of the private-equity types. In 2002, when he narrowly lost his first bid, nearly a quarter of donations to his campaign came from Wall Street. Pretty much all of it, Kornacki writes, was from outside Newark. 

Dylan Byers of Politico notices the Obama campaign is distributing an edited version of Booker’s subsequent remarks:

In an almost four-minute follow up video for his social media followers, Booker explained that Romney’s business record was fair game, and that he was simply frustrated by negative campaigning.

The Obama campaign, however, sent out a different video on Sunday night. On Twitter, Obama campaign press secretary Ben La Bolt tweeted out a 35-second version of the video, which was very likely cut by the Obama campaign (because, when I clicked on La Bolt’s link, it had just 8 views).

What gets lost in the edit is the nuance of Booker’s argument. Watching the 35-second video, you would believe that Booker was flip-flopping from his comments on Meet The Press and going on an all-out assault on Romney. In the four-minute video, Booker stands by his comments — including “nauseating” — and explains that while he does think Romney’s record is fair game, he remains “frustrated” by the Obama campaign’s negative attacks.

In other words, the 35-second video is a reverse of position. The four-minute video is an extenstion of the original argument.

Asked for his response to the ad, RNC spokesman Tim Miller, who has been attacking the ad on Twitter, emailed:

It’s clear this video was orchestrated by the Obama campaign, and as long as he is President any defense of the free market/private sector by members of his party must be silenced and apologized for.

The Obama camp’s Michael-Bay-style editing with a blender set for “puree” screams confidence, doesn’t it?

UPDATE: I’m told that this morning, Joe Scarborough joked that Booker’s follow-up message “clarifying” his remarks “looked like a hostage video.”

David Axelrod, this morning: “Gas prices have been going down for the past six weeks. You think the GOP will blame the President?”

The actual national average gas price in the United States this morning: $3.73. It peaked at a bit above $3.90 earlier this year.

The price of gas, in perspective, over the past five years, according to GasBuddy.com:

As you can see, $3.70 per gallon is still pretty darn high… and for most Americans, slightly less brutally expensive is not really cause for celebration.

As a man who used to drive a  roughly 20-miles-per-gallon Dodge Caravan, you would think that Axelrod would be more sensitive about the cost of gas.

In the Thursday edition of the Morning Jolt, a lot of Wisconsin talk, and a quick look at gay-marriage laws in the swing states, but notably a question that borders on blasphemous inside the Beltway: For all of their money and incumbency advantages, is the Obama campaign really that good?

Is Obama’s Campaign . . . Really That Good?

In response to some election analysts’ sudden realization that President Obama could very well be the underdog in his matchup with Mitt Romney, Ace writes at the Ace of Spades:

And speaking of events — there are, of course, a lot of unknowns lurking out there, ready to become known at any moment; and one strains one’s imagination trying to think of unknowns which could suddenly spring up which help Barack Obama.

Whereas one has little difficulty thinking of Sudden Events which would damage him further — France and Greece, for example, imploding, while following policies which seem an awful lot closer to Obama’s program than to Mitt Romney’s.

And why even go abroad searching for monsters? What if California or Illinois melts down? What if they default, and/or their bonds stop selling?

The economy seems unlikely to improve dramatically — indeed, it seems softening, worsening, deteriorating. It seems far more likely that, if the economy were to suddenly move from a slowly-degrading flatline, it would deteriorate precipitously, rather than suddenly improve markedly.

A sudden 6% jump in GDP would help Obama . . . but that seems less likely than a -2% double dip of the recession. Neither are very likely at the moment, but the former seems fanciful while the latter seems like a genuine possibility.

Even to the extent that election campaigns matter — Is Obama’s campaign a strong one? . . . Obama’s ads must, due to facts, remain a muddle — it’s bad, but it’s getting better, not quite as bad as it could be. We must do better, because we cannot be satisfied with the horrible economy as it is, but who knows, it could be worse.

The folks in Romney-world would never, in a million years, want to be quoted in a manner that suggests they’re underestimating the competition. They know Obama will have an enormous fundraising advantage, a bully pulpit and megaphone that are simply unparalleled in American life; taxpayers will pick up the tab for untold sums in “official” trips that look and sound like campaign swings, and of course, the media will be much, much tougher on Romney than Obama.

But . . . periodically, when talking to Romney folks, they point out their rivals’ alleged billion-dollar fundraising goal, the 700 full-time staffers, the super-duper high-tech gadgets they have in their Chicago headquarters, and . . . you get the sense that they’re still waiting for the Obama campaign’s much-hyped A-game. This is it? This is what all of those resources and advantages have produced for Obama? “Forward”? The life of Julia? Bill Clinton talking about how terrible a botched SEAL mission would have been for Obama?

Just how great a strategist is David Axelrod? The conventional wisdom inside the Beltway is that he’s a rumpled genius, who saw the enormous potential in a little-known state senator and helped steer Obama’s ambitions all the way to the Oval Office.

Except Barack Obama may have been the luckiest man in American politics from 2004 to 2008. If Jack Ryan’s marriage hadn’t ended the way it had, or if his divorce records had remained sealed, Obama’s Senate race proceeds quite differently. If Illinois Republicans had any kind of a bench in 2004, Obama would not have had the easy lay-up of running against Alan Keyes. (Remember, for about two days, there was talk about the state GOP recruiting Mike Ditka. Ask Gray Davis, Steve Clute, or Norm Coleman what it’s like to run against a local celebrity.)

Then Obama runs for president, and a vote for the Iraq War that was only a minor issue for John Kerry and John Edwards in 2004 is suddenly a very big deal in 2008. Hillary Clinton turns out to be a lot more brittle on the campaign trail than anyone expected — remember driver’s licenses for illegal immigrants — and Hillary Clinton’s chief strategist completely misunderstands how his party allocates delegates.

Then in the general election, Obama is on the verge of blowing it heading into the autumn, even as he’s going up against a Republican who refuses to make an issue of his pastor and mentor, who has since presented himself to the American public as a raving lunatic at the National Press Club. Then Lehman collapses, the economy tanks, and whatever hope McCain and Palin had of swimming against the anti-incumbent, Bush fatigue undertow fades away.

David Axelrod didn’t make any of those things happen. Barack Obama didn’t make any of those things happen. You can argue they responded well, and indeed, that is a big part of politics.

But the Barack Obama of 2009 to 2012 hasn’t responded to events nearly as well as the Obama of 2004 to 2008. Obama has acknowledged this, in a way, when he told disappointed donors last year, “I’m running against the Barack Obama of 2008.”

The Obama campaign and the White House — pardon me for repeating myself — will use the “Mitt has no principles” and the “Mitt is a crazy right-winger” charges interchangeably, even though they obviously contradict each other.

Politico, today:

[Axelrod mocked Romney as an Etch-a-Sketch] a day after a top West Winger went the other way during a briefing with national political reporters, unexpectedly rejecting the entire empty-core storyline and arguing that the real Romney was the 2012 conservative, and not the moderate, pro-choice Romney of the 1990s.

The aide’s argument — which can’t be recounted here because of the strict no-quotes, no names ground rules the White House imposes on such sessions — set off alarms among the White House press corps, political cadaver dogs paid to sniff nearly imperceptible changes in tone and language. Reporters, who can be quoted under the rules, harrumphed.

“He has a core now! You said he didn’t have a core — are you saying he has a core now?” asked an incredulous TV network correspondent.

Permit me a literary reference in response to this extraordinary message fluidity:

Just this moment it had been announced that Oceania was not after all at war with Eurasia. Oceania was at war with Eastasia. Eurasia was an ally. There was, of course, no admission that any change had taken place. Merely it became known, with extreme suddenness and everywhere at once, that Eastasia and not Eurasia was the enemy.

Over in Mike Allen’s Politico newsletter:

David Axelrod tells us the Obama campaign will make a major umbrella issue of what he calls “Romney’s penchant for secrecy”: “George Bush felt it was appropriate to release the names of his bundlers. John McCain did. But not Mitt Romney. Why did George Bush and John McCain release multiple years of tax returns, but not Mitt Romney? Why did Mitt Romney leave Massachusetts government with the hard drives from his computers, and why did his senior aides leave with the hard drives from their computers? Why won’t he be more forthcoming about some of these offshore investments?

“Harkening back to my youth, which extends far beyond yours, there was a show called, ‘I’ve Got A Secret.’ Increasingly, I think that would be the appropriate title for the Romney campaign. There are central issues, but this is a disturbing one and it goes to that question of, like, ‘Who is this guy? What does he stand for? What does he believe? What do we know about him?’”

–Axelrod, on yesterday’s NYT A1er, “White House Welcomes Donors, And Lobbyists Slip in Door, Too”: “The reason that people know who comes to the White House is because for the first time in history, the President ordered that it be so . . . Why do they know who raises money for us? Because we disclose it. The only bundlers Romney discloses are lobbyists who raise money for him, and that reason is because Barack Obama wrote a law when he was in the Senate that required that.”

The article in question:

Many of the president’s biggest donors, while not lobbyists, took lobbyists with them to the White House, while others performed essentially the same function on their visits . . .

Most donors, including Dr. Mohlenbrock and Mr. Kiani, declined to talk about their motivations for giving. But Patrick J. Kennedy, the former representative from Rhode Island, who donated $35,800 to an Obama re-election fund last fall while seeking administration support for a nonprofit venture, said contributions were simply a part of “how this business works.”

“If you want to call it ‘quid pro quo,’ fine,” he said. “At the end of the day, I want to make sure I do my part.”

Mr. Kennedy visited the White House several times to win support for One Mind for Research, his initiative to help develop new treatments for brain disorders. While his family name and connections are clearly influential, he said, he knows White House officials are busy. And as a former chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee, he said he was keenly aware of the political realities they face.

“I know that they look at the reports,” he said, referring to records of campaign donations. “They’re my friends anyway, but it won’t hurt when I ask them for a favor if they don’t see me as a slouch.”

So Axelrod wants voters to credit the administration for being open about their “quid pro quo” meetings with donors, Democratic power brokers, lobbyists, etc.

If it won’t be too taxing, check out the April 16 edition of the Morning Jolt . . .

Axelrod-eo Clown

It was a beautiful Sunday in the greater Washington D.C. area – sunny, in the 70s much of the morning – but David Axelrod . . . didn’t have such a great day.

First, I’ll let Jim Treacher spotlight the fantastic verbiage from the president’s chief strategist.

“The choice in this election is between an economy that produces a growing middle class and that gives people a chance to get ahead, and their kids a chance to get ahead, and an economy that continues down the road we’re on.”

Good point, Dave.

The Obama campaign has been able to devote its singular focus to Mitt Romney for less than a week. It’s been a fun one, hasn’t it?

Q: Who’s having a worse week, David Axelrod or his boss? A: Yes.

Step back, everyone! This man’s a communications professional!

Video here.

Jen Rubin dissects the rest of Axelrod’s performance on the Sunday shows:

There was plenty more that Axelrod said that was downright wrong or misleading. He “accuses” Romney of wanting to the rich to pay at a lower tax rate; what he doesn’t say is both Romney and the Simpson-Bowles plan also take away deductions and credits so the rich won’t be paying less taxes relative to the rest of the population.

He uses the president’s favorite straw man: “No one can argue that it makes sense that people who are making a million dollars a year or more to pay less than the average middle class worker in this country.” And no one is. In fact the top 10% of earners have been paying roughly 70 percent of the taxes. The bottom 50 percent pay about 3 percent of the tax load.

But let’s take a step back. Where in this is a plan to accelerate growth and job creation? How does creating a sort of new minimum tax for 4,000 taxpayers assist in the recovery? Maybe that is why Obama and Axelrod spend so much time on gimmicks and phony “fairness” arguments. They haven’t got a clue how to create an economic environment in which investors, employers and consumer will all benefit.

Richard Fernandez at the Belmont Club concludes:

Pity poor Axelrod. What must be truly terrifying is the growing realization among President’s supporters that he could actually lose to Mitt Romney. Yes, to Mitt Romney. Not because Romney is a superlative candidate who is electrifying the American voter but because the contest is shaping up to be ‘anyone but Obama in 2012′.

The core problem is the exent of the President’s incompetence. It had always been thought that even if the President were poor at governance, he would be good at campaigning. They relied on that idea and forgot what all track and field coaches know: that the 100 meter man will not necessarily place well in the 42,195 meter marathon.

President Obama could find a second wind from somewhere. Yet clearly his key strength of futurity — the ability to act as a blank screen upon which people could project their aspirations — can no longer be useful in the face of his track record. Barack Obama in 2008 was a promise. Barack Obama in 2012 is a busted flush. The efforts by Axelrod to make the debate once again about the future of America have largely failed.

And they will continue to fail because many of Obama’s early blunders are now coming to term. He now has a past and and a present in addition to his ever glittering future. And the expected present consists of bulletins from an economy poisoned by his largesse; a war in Southwest Asia run on a crazy strategic premise; a foreign policy whose centerpiece is “leading from behind”; and an environmental policy that has produced one bankrupt energy company after another. Nothing but bad news. His people are demoralized. They are losing it. Perhaps even the Secret Service has caught the air of dissipation in the White House.

The rest of the Jolt looks at the insanity within the Secret Service, insanity within the United Kingdom’s House of Lords . . . and some general all-purpose insanity in the news.

Sometimes, the Morning Jolt is just too good to make you wait until the actual morning:

Obama’s Allies Let Out What They Really Think of Ann Romney

What?

What?

So apparently on CNN Wednesday evening, Democratic strategist Hilary Rosen felt the best way to help her preferred candidate, Barack Obama, was to go after Ann Romney, Mitt’s wife.

ANDERSON COOPER: To the Romney campaign’s point, they say they’re focusing on the economy, and that’s what women say they overwhelmingly care about right now in poll after poll. And whether it’s a typical pattern or not, women are seeing jobs come back much more slowly than men are. Is there anything really wrong then, on reaching out to women on an issue that they care about, on the economy?

HILARY ROSEN: Well, first, can we just get rid of this word, “war on women”? The Obama campaign does not use it, President Obama does not use it — this is something that the Republicans are accusing people of using, but they’re actually the ones spreading it. With respect to economic issues, I think actually that Mitt Romney’s right, that ultimately, women care more about the economic well-being of their families and the like. But he doesn’t connect on that issue either. What you have is Mitt Romney running around the country saying, “Well, my wife tells me what women really care about are economic issues.” And, “When I listen to my wife, that’s what I’m hearing.” Guess what? His wife has never actually worked a day in her life. She’s never really dealt with the economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing — in terms of how do we feed our kids, how do we send them to school, and how do — why we worry about their future.

Brittany Cohan: “Democrats are all about choice. Until you are a pro-life woman who stays at home and raises her kids. Then you’re wrong. Or something.”

Erick Erickson: “If raising 5 sons through breast cancer and MS isn’t a real job, I’m not sure what is.”

Our Charles Cooke observes, “An astonishing number of liberals on Twitter have feeds featuring both nonsensical ‘war on women’ claims and mean comments about Ann Romney.” He adds, “Actually, @hilaryr, if the federal government ran its budgets like most mothers do, we wouldn’t have a $900bn structural annual deficit.”

Dana Perino scoffs, “The problem with saying something explosive on a network no one watches is that everyone hears about it and few hear the hollow apology.”

Moe Lane notices, “Hey, do you know what Hilary Rosen considers real work? Pushing copy-protected CDs. That’s right: she was a RIAA lobbyist.”

Ryan Williams, Romney spokesman, notices a report from the Wall Street Journal from February 16: “Obama advisers have occasionally told [DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman-Schultz] to ‘tone it down’ . . . She agreed with them to enlist . . . Anita Dunn and Hilary Rosen.”

Chelsea Grunwald: “Question for Hillary Rosen, Michelle Obama is technically not employed right now, is her input on female economic issues invalid too?”

Drew M. asks, “Does she have to report her CNN appearance to the FCC as an in-kind contribution to the Romney campaign?”

How bad did it get?

Obama campaign manager Jim Messina, 10:42 p.m. eastern time: “I could not disagree with Hilary Rosen any more strongly. Her comments were wrong and family should be off limits. She should apologize.”

David Axelrod, 10:48 p.m. eastern time: “Also Disappointed in Hilary Rosen’s comments about Ann Romney. They were inappropriate and offensive.”

Oh, by the way:

Hilary Rosen, the chairman and CEO of the Recording Industry Association of America, will leave the organization at the end of 2003. Rosen had worked for the RIAA — the trade group that represents the sound recording creators, manufacturers and distributors — for seventeen years and served as the organization’s CEO since 1998 . . . In a statement, Rosen expressed a desire to spend more time with her children as a motivating factor in her decision to resign.

So, when Rosen did that . . . did she stop “really dealing with the economic issues that a majority of the women in this country are facing” as she believes Ann Romney did?

Do only working mothers have views on economic issues and economic pressures?

Bill Burton, Obama’s former who now heads his SuperPAC, insisted last week that it was completely unacceptable for Republicans to not denounce Rush Limbaugh for his comments, but there was no need for Democrats to distance themselves from Bill Maher. Maher made a $1 million donation to Obama’s SuperPAC and is performing at a fundraiser for the Alabama Democratic Party, and has in the past used the c-word and t-word to describe Sarah Palin in his stand-up routines and his HBO show.

Burton:

“First of all, obviously, some of those things were vulgar and inappropriate and said over the course of years of a comedian’s life. It’s not language I would use or language we would use at Priorities USA,” Burton said. “But the notion that there is an equivalence between what a comedian has said over the course of his career and what the de facto leader of the Republican Party said to sexually degrade a woman who led in a political debate of our time, is crazy.”

If the comparison is crazy, why is Obama’s chief strategist David Axelrod bailing on Maher’s show?

David Axelrod will not be appearing as a guest on “Real Time with Bill Maher,” despite reports last week that he was scheduled to do the show in the next few weeks.

“He’s not scheduled to go on at this time,” said Ben LaBolt, the press secretary for President Obama’s reelection campaign.

So, Mr. Burton, is David Axelrod crazy, or are you just offering an implausible spin that not even your closest allies believe?