This Bain/Bane pic, posted a few hours ago on buzzfeed.com and tweeted by Michael Hayes, arrives at a perfect moment, which is to say a perfectly negative (dare I say calamitous?) one for Mitt Romney. The clamor about his Bain Capital history plus his refusal to release tax returns is burning up the cable news channels only days before Tom Hardy‘s performance as the evil, one-note-ish Bane is about to sink into the consciousness of tens of millions coast to coast.

On one level the Bain/Bane meme is idiotic and dismissable (it would be another thing, of course, if Hardy’s character was spelled Bain) but on another broader, vaguer, sloppier level The Dark Knight Rises will rub it in all the same. Bain/Bane = predatory bad news sociopaths. This is Romney’s worst week so far — right here, right now. Chris Nolan didn’t mean to assault or undermine his presidential campaign, but he has. Or will within days.