President Toxic: The Best US Job Destroyer Ever!

stevenkesslar · September 19, 2020

Trump opens Wisconsin rally blasting Biden for 'disastrous global sellouts' that 'surrendered' US jobs

Quote

"Joe Biden devoted his entire career to offshoring Wisconsin jobs, outsourcing your factories, throwing open your borders, dragging us into endless, ridiculous foreign wars and surrendering your children's future to China," Trump said.

Until today I thought "It's the economy, stupid" was the one thing Biden still needed to focus on to close the deal. Now the race has changed. I loved you, RBG. It's going to take a while to see how that plays out, and who it may help or hurt.

That said, in the debates I think the above Trump attack is what Biden needs to be prepared for, and turn back on President Toxic. I think he should portray President Toxic as what he is: a great jobs destroyer.

Here's a few minute segment from President Toxic and Hillary on NAFTA and trade in 2016. Not surprisingly, we already know Trump will try to revisit this, like in that quote above:

I'll go to the grave thinking Hillary won the debates. And that she would have won the election, had it been in October. But when I view that clip above, I think it's a good enough explanation of why President Toxic won the Slavery Electoral College. He nailed her, I think. "Read my book" was a horrible rebuttal. And it's not that people even watched this debate. It's that Trump plastered this message all over those swing states for months.

In President Toxic's defense, this should arguably work even better against Biden. He did vote for NAFTA. He was Vice President.

There's two problems President Toxic has with his strategy, that already proved not to work on "law and order". First, he can't really get away with ignoring the fact that he is President. This is all happening on his watch. Second, Biden doesn't have to defend what is going on right now. He needs to point out what a miserable excuse for a President Trump is. He's in the position Trump was in four years ago.

Here's one way to make the point. Hillary said in that 2016 debate that President Toxic's plan would lose us 3.5 million jobs. She was wrong. It was 4.5 million jobs. In January 2017 there were 145.6 million non-farm jobs in the US. In August 2020 there were 140.9 million jobs. President Toxic destroyed 4.5 million American jobs so far during his Pesidency.

President Toxic will of course say "it is what it is" and we could do no better than 200,000 dead Americans and millions of lost jobs. But 55 % of Americans don't approve of President Toxic's handling of COVID-19. So anytime Trump wants to talk about jobs, Biden is telling people what they already believe when he says President Toxic botched dealing with the plague. That cost us hundreds of thousands of American lives and millions of jobs. While he was President.

The facts on manufacturing are the same. I've posted the numbers and charts from the three key Rust Belt swing states. Here's the long term US manufacturing job chart. My premise is that 40 % or so of American voters will believe any lie President Toxic tells them. The good news about that is the 60 % of Americans who don't buy Trump's bullshit is a crushing majority. My other assumption is that if Biden just tells people the truth, he can accurately and effectively portray President Toxic as a job destroyer.

In a clip I'll post below, Biden said in 2007 when he was campaigning for President that NAFTA was a net job creator in Delaware while he was Senator, until W. stopped enforcing it. That's what turned him for a free trader to a fair trader. That all sounds true. If you look at that chart you'll see that after NAFTA passed in 1994 factory jobs in the US climbed - from 16.8 million in Jan. 1994 to a peak of 17.6 million at the manufacturing peak in 1998. In Jan. 2001 when W. took office there were 17.1 million manufacturing jobs in the US. So NAFTA did not cost the US jobs in the decade it was enacted.

The thing Biden can hammer on is that by the time he took office as Veep in Jan. 2009 there were only 12.5 million manufacturing jobs. Biden can't tie President Toxic directly to the loss of over 4.5 million factory jobs under W. But he can tie President Toxic to his own China policies and corporate "job creator" tax giveaways. Similar tax policies failed to produce the promised factory jobs under W. And they failed to produce the promised jobs under Trump. It's the same politically devastating argument Bill Clinton made at the 2012 DNC. Fat cat tax cuts and trickle down works great. As long as you don't understand math. Biden can add in that President Toxic doesn't understand facts, either.

Speaking of facts, there were 12.4 million manufacturing jobs in the US when Obama and Biden handed the economy off to President Toxic. Now there are 12.1 million manufacturing jobs. President Toxic promised to bring back millions of factory jobs. He destroyed 300,000 of them. Who is he to talk about job creation?

I spent a few hours trying to learn more about Biden and trade. What I'll post below is an article that gives a good summary of his record up until he became Vice President. And then a video from late 2007 that was helpful to me. I think it's probably a meeting with a newspaper editorial board. What I like about this clip is its less campaign rhetoric, and more of an informed discussion where Biden lays out what he probably really thinks.

Biden's Record on Trade

My point in posting the video is this. I think Biden can finish the job of prosecuting President Toxic's incompetence and failure on the only issue he has left: the economy and jobs. And the way I think he should do it is find the words and ideas that everyone can relate to that channel his inner Bernie. The elements of it are there in that video. Nobody really wanted to take on either the China trade practices that are unfair, or the US corporations that benefit from them. President Toxic talked a good game, maybe. But he didn't do it. He just gave huge tax cuts to corporations. Which did nothing for factory jobs, and created a $1 trillion annual debt. And that was all BEFORE Coronavirus, which Trump completely failed to manage. And which cost us many more jobs and lives.

Compared to Trump's train wreck, Obama and Biden at least created close to 1 million factory jobs. Biden can legitimately argue that he can do it better and quicker again, if given a chance. And a Senate majority so McConnell can't block everything again.

The line I heard that best summarized the criticism of Hillary 2016 came from Clinton pollster Stan Greenberg: "How could she not close on the economy?" He was referring to all the "sex and sleaze" anti-Trump ads Hillary ran, based on the assumption that they would disqualify President Toxic with a majority of voters. Greenberg has credibility with me because him and his wife, U.S. Rep. DeLaurio, probably did as much as any two people to work closely with Hillary to craft messages on the economy and prep for the debates.

The best criticism I heard of Biden's DNC came from Axelrod and Ron Brownstein: it failed to make a simple and cutting economic case against President Toxic. My guess is that the main goal was to define Biden as "Decency Joe". Trump clearly wanted to make him "Crooked Joe" and win by a sliver again by presenting himself as the slightly lesser of two evils. Mostly, what Biden has done so far is working. People view him significantly more favorably than President Toxic.

If the historians and political scientists like Lichtman are right, people will draw all these conclusions on their own. In theory, Biden can just stand at the debate silently with a sign that says "Are you better off, and safer, than you were when Donald Trump was elected?" But the debates will no doubt be livelier than that. I think Biden can nail President Toxic to the wall on the economy and jobs.

What I've heard Biden say so far this year that sounded best to me was when he talks, in detail, about what he did as Veep in states like Michigan. That's when he was in charge of saving industries, and tens of thousands of jobs. It sounds real. More important, the passion comes out. All President Toxic can do is his hyperbole about "the greatest economy ever".

One last line Biden argument needs to get in, about poverty. In 2017, Obama and Biden handed President Toxic an economy that had achieved the lowest Black and Hispanic poverty rates in US history. Obamacare, including help with unexpected medical bills and pre-existing conditions, was part of the reason why. While we don't have the numbers yet, we probably now have the highest Black and Hispanic poverty rates in a very long time. That's thanks to President Toxic's failure to lead with COVID-19. Plus he keeps trying to kill Obamacare, which lifted millions out of poverty. And kept others with serious medical conditions from being driven into poverty.

So President Park Avenue has no business going on about poverty after what he did to America. Biden should force him to explain those failures, too.