Carville: Romney losing the fight over Bain

(CBS News) Political consultant James Carville said presumptive Republican nominee Mitt Romney is on the defensive over his time at Bain Capital, and President Obama's negative campaigning and advertisements are working.

"He's losing the fight because it's getting all convoluted," Carville said Monday on "CBS This Morning." "All people know about Bain is they shipped jobs overseas and they shipped profits overseas," Carville said.

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Carville, who just released his new book "It's the Middle Class, Stupid!", said the election is about the economy, and "Romney is a rich guy, he's not a sympathetic guy in all of this" because the Obama camp is successfully defining Romney as part of a culture that leverages debt on American businesses, shops jobs overseas and sends its profits to Switzerland and the Cayman Islands. "They are trying to define Romney before he gets out of the chute."

"The most significant thing in this campaign," Carville said, is that the Obama campaign has pounced on the message that "Romney is not the solution, he's the problem."

"It's the Mitt Romney's in the world making it difficult, not the president," Carville argued.

Carville said Romney has to "stop whining" and do a better job of defining his time at Bain and highlight other aspects of his qualifications.

"Romney's got to expand his portfolio beyond just Bain," Carville said, noting that Romney was governor of Massachusetts and an influential leader in the Mormon Church.

The Democratic consultant had some advice for the president's campaign, too: "Obama's got to talk about what he's gonna do in the second term." But he said "right now is not the time."