In the space of a few months in late 2009 and early 2010, Republicans won the governorships of Virginia and New Jersey and a special U.S. Senate election in Massachusetts — all states that President Obama had easily carried in the 2008 election. In all three races, Democrats aggressively worked to tie their Republican opponents to the highly unpopular former President George W. Bush. In January 2010, a Politico headline delivered the following verdict: “Democrats’ Bush-bashing strategy goes bust.” Two and a half years later, facing off against Republican Mitt Romney, Obama still hasn’t learned this lesson.

Last Thursday, Obama gave a widely-panned economic speech in Cleveland that, at its heart, was an attempt to turn the 2012 election into a referendum on Bush. “From 2001 to 2008, we had the slowest job growth in half a century,” Obama said during the 54-minute snoozer. He later explained, “Gov. Romney and his allies in Congress believe deeply in the theory that we tried during the last decade — the theory that the best way to grow the economy is from the top down.”