"No Bain, no gain"

Today Krugman discusses why Obama should keep hammering away at Bain. First he notes that "voters are not policy wonks", and then reminds us that for several reasons we cannot rely on the news media to get the essentials of the policy debate across to the public." Then comes this:

So running on the real policy issues by itself isn’t going to work. By all means, run on the real issues — but do so by creating a narrative, a pattern that registers with the public.

And Romney’s biography offers a golden opportunity to do just that. His policy proposals amount to a radical redistribution of income away from the middle class to the very rich; he’s also being highly dishonest about budgets and just about everything else. How to make those true facts credible? By associating them with his business career, which involved a lot of profiting by laying off workers and/or taking away their benefits; his personal finances, which involved so much tax avoidance that he’s afraid to let us see his returns before 2010; his shiftiness over when exactly he left Bain.

You could criticize the biographical focus if it were being used to convey a false impression of where Romney stands, but that’s not what’s going on here; instead, it’s being used to get the truth about the candidate past the noise and the media barrier. The truth is that the Obama campaign would be doing the American people a disservice if it didn’t make the most of Bain.

Preach it, brother.