Mr. 47% still doesn't get it

At some level, Mitt Romney clearly understands the epic disaster of his 47 percent comments'otherwise he wouldn't be releasing painful videos like this in which he tries to convince voters that he cares about them:

I'm not convinced even the most charismatic politician in the world could talk his way out of comments like the ones Romney made about the 47 percent, but I'm damn sure that Romney isn't the most charismatic politician in the world. It's just agonizing listening to him try to walk back the substance of what he said, especially when it's so obvious that he's on a damage control mission.

But even though Romney clearly understands that there's something about him that needs to be fixed, he just can't help being himself. Today, he held an event to highlight manufacturing jobs, aiming to connect with blue-collar workers in Ohio. So who does he invite on stage with him? Nothing but executives.

Romney, struggling to win over blue-collar voters, has only owners, presidents and corporate treasurers at his Ohio roundtable.
' @PhilipRucker via TweetDeck If you look carefully at this picture of the event you can see some guys behind Romney who appear to be wearing hard hats. But the folks on the stage'the ones who have chairs and microphones'were all management and owners. The kind of people that Mitt Romney likes to call job creators'the people who he thinks really matter. To him, everyone else is just riff-raff.

2:14 PM PT: Greg Sargent reports that awful ad at the top of the post will be Romney's only ad on the air across the entire country. When you're running an ad trying to convince people you didn't mean it when you said you were writing off half the country, you're in deep trouble.