Biting the Hand

The target of Obama’s latest attack ad is also one of the Democratic Party’s largest contributors.

Bain Capital, Mitt Romney’s former private equity firm, has donated more than $500,000 to Democrats in 2012, 72 percent of its total candidate contributions.

Obama lashed out at the firm in an effort to paint Romney as a job killer, releasing a campaign video featuring former laborers at three bankrupt Bain acquisitions.

The ad and the accompanying website has been criticized for misrepresenting the presumed Republican nominee’s business record. CNNMoney reports:

For example, look at what [the website] says about Dade Behring: "With Dade Behring, Mitt Romney and his investors took over a healthy company and loaded it with debt. Rather than sell the company, they then had Dade take out even more loans to buy out their shares, driving the company into bankruptcy. Nearly 3,000 workers lost their jobs, while Romney and his partners made more than $250 million in profit."

The Obama campaign cleverly used the name Dade Behring, which is what Dade International was renamed two years later once Bain had acquired both a German company (Behring) and a diagnostics unit from DuPont. One could argue that, by that point, Dade was a "healthy company"—but only thanks to Bain's efforts.