Isaac gets in the way of Dems, too

TAMPA, Fla. – Republicans, take solace. Democrats now also know what it feels like to have their party’s message stepped on by a hurricane named Isaac.

The Democratic National Committee assembled an all-star roster of surrogates in Tampa on Tuesday morning to slam Mitt Romney’s economic record ahead of the start of the Republican National Convention.

But the team of Democrats had to delay their press conference because President Obama decided at the last minute to give a televised update on federal preparations for the storm threatening the Gulf Coast.

When the event finally got under way, the speakers – who included Gov. Martin O’Malley (Md.), Mayor Antonio Villaraigosa of Los Angeles and former White House
Press secretary Robert Gibbs – each opened their remarks by offering their thoughts and prayers for residents in the storm’s path.

It was an awkward beginning for a press conference whose sole aim was partisan politics.

{mosads}Isaac, which forced Republicans to call off the first day of their convention, has been disrupting Democrats all week. The Obama campaign had planned to send Vice President Biden to Tampa to rebut the GOP message, but that trip was scuttled over concerns that security for the vice president would take resources away from the storm preparation. And the chairwoman of the Democratic National Committee, Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz (Fla.) also abandoned Tampa to tend to her constituents in south Florida.

The changes have thrust Villaraigosa and O’Malley, a possible presidential contender in 2016, into lead roles in the Democratic counter-programming. After the Isaac delay, they criticized Romney’s record at Bain Capital and as governor of Massachusetts, saying his economic policies would be “a disaster” for the middle class.

“Mitt Romney was a job destroyer, not a job creator, as he claims,” Villaraigosa said.

O’Malley compared his leadership of Bain, a private equity firm, to “a ship wrecker,” rather than a shipbuilder, as he cited examples of Bain employing “creative destruction” to strip down companies in a bid to fix them and increase their profits.

A spokesman for the Romney campaign, Ryan Williams, called the Democratic attacks “false and baseless.”

“The facts speak for themselves – with 23 million Americans struggling for work, nearly one in six Americans living in poverty, and median incomes declining, the Obama campaign cannot defend a record of broken promises and failed policies,” Williams said. “Mitt Romney and Paul Ryan have a plan to strengthen the middle class by creating jobs and turning around our economy.”