Former Obama campaign aides mock Romney's anti-poverty message

“In a word,” said one of President Barack Obama’s 2012 campaign alums, describing the reactions bouncing around on private emails and text messages, “disbelief.”

Another word might be mockery.

“Romney is 47 percent concerned about inequality,” the president’s 2012 campaign press secretary, Ben LaBolt, said in an email. “The other 53 percent of him would rather polish his car elevators.”

The car elevator is a common refrain.

“Romney’s problem has always been really about believability and connection with the challenges of average Americans,” said Jim Messina, Obama’s 2012 campaign manager. “It’s simply never going to be believable to go from car elevators, off-shore accounts and his famous 47 percent comment to the populist income equality warrior.”…

“Doing it in such a ham-handed manner in what appears to be a deathbed conversion is a strange way to suddenly come out of the box with it, and I find it disingenuous, and I think a lot of other people will too,” de Blasio said, speaking Saturday evening from New York. “This is a guy who was pretty brazenly uninterested in addressing income inequality in 2012.”