Behind the Ad: Bain Capital still on Democrats' radar

By Richard K. Barry

(Another installment in our "Behind the Ad" series.)

Who: Priorities USA (Democratic supporting Super PAC).

Where: Colorado, Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and Virginia.

What's going on: Bain Capital is back in the news and a pro-Obama super-PAC is making hey while the sun shines. Over the weekend The New York Times ran a story with the title, "Companies' Ills Did Not Harm Romney's Firm." In part, it said this:

The private equity firm, co-founded and run by Mitt Romney, held a majority stake in more than 40 United States-based companies from its inception in 1984 to early 1999.... Of those companies, at least seven eventually filed for bankruptcy while Bain remained involved, or shortly afterward, according to a review by The New York Times. In some instances, hundreds of employees lost their jobs. In most of those cases, however, records and interviews suggest that Bain and its executives still found a way to make money. [...]

He has fended off attacks about job losses at companies Bain owned, saying, "Sometimes investments don't work and you're not successful." But an examination of what happened when companies Bain controlled wound up in bankruptcy highlights just how different Bain and other private equity firms are from typical denizens of the real economy, from mom-and-pop stores to bootstrapping entrepreneurial ventures.

Bain structured deals so that it was difficult for the firm and its executives to ever really lose, even if practically everyone else involved with the company that Bain owned did, including its employees, creditors and even, at times, investors in Bain's funds.

So, some people with Democratic ties think it's unfair to go after Romney for his work in private equity. As long as the truth is told, I don't care what "they" say. The point, I would think, is to let the people decide if they want someone with Mitt Romney's business experience in the White House. Why is it wrong to tell them what that experience involved? Seems fair to me.

One more thing: If Bain Capital structured its deals to make sure it never really lost, isn't that what the right wing likes to call socialism?

(Cross-posted at Lippmann's Ghost.)