I’m dying to know how much of this spot was already in the can and ready to go when Obama dropped his Romney-hates-steelworkers spot on Team Mitt this morning. Obviously the interviews with the Steel Dynamics employees were already done, but had they edited everything yet or do they just have hours of footage from personnel at former Bain projects from which they can pick and choose as necessary to make ads? If they actually anticipated the GST Steel attack spot and put this together in advance as a direct answer, that’s some mighty fine strategizin’. Maybe they have an entire vault full of unreleased response ads for every conceivable Obama attack, like some sort of campaign version of Prince. Or maybe it’s just the Bain stuff. They knew O would make that an issue. It only stands to reason that they’d stockpile ammo in anticipation.

Note the line here about moving up in socioeconomic status. The Bain attacks are aimed squarely at the resentments of the working class so here’s Romney aiming squarely at their aspirations. Needless to say, it’s no accident that these guys were filmed while wearing their hardhats. Exit question via ABC: Why isn’t the word “Bain” uttered even once in this clip? It’s not that much of a liability already, is it?