Trump, Biden spar over economy, workers in Labor Day blitz

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP

By NOREEN NASIR, ALEXANDRA JAFFE and KATHLEEN RONAYNE

HARRISBURG, Pa. (AP) — Democratic presidential nominee Joe Biden and President Donald Trump spent Monday diminishing each other’s credentials on the economy and understanding of the American worker as the presidential campaign entered its final, post-Labor Day stretch.

While workers live by an “American code,” Biden said Trump “lives by a code of lies, greed and selfishness” as he met with labor leaders in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, a key swing state. Trump, meanwhile, tried to put the halting economic recovery under the best light in a White House press conference where he said Biden and his running mate, Sen. Kamala Harris, would “destroy this country and would destroy this economy.”

Labor Day typically marks the unofficial start to the fall campaign season as candidates accelerate their activity for the final sprint to Election Day. Both campaigns reflected that urgency Monday, as Harris and Vice President Mike Pence each campaigned in Wisconsin, a state Trump narrowly won in 2016. The events played out against the background of the pandemic, which has upended campaigning and pushed Biden and Harris in particular to conduct much of the traditional election activity online.

While the health of the American economy and status of workers were dominant Labor Day themes, both campaigns also focused on recent protests that have roiled Wisconsin and the rest of the nation after police shot Jacob Blake, a Black man, in Kenosha last month.



Democratic presidential candidate former Vice President Joe Biden speaks during an event with local union members in the backyard of a home in Lancaster, Pa., Monday, Sept. 7, 2020. (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)


Read more: https://apnews.com/e4a3a138a9c3b9f606c725bdb7cce11b

[bucolic_frolic]

1. Trump is remaking himself as a choir boy for the election

Listen to his pronouncements over the last couple of days. He's supporting science for the vaccine, he's blasting the military industrial complex as a money making machine. Anyone who thinks these shifts don't motivate ill-informed voters to switch sides and vote for Trump is crazy. Biden needs to draw the hard distinction every day between himself and Trump. But Trump will now start to assume Biden's positions. This is a tried and true strategy used by Bushco in Election 2000. Gore could get no press because Bush was already there!

Wish I didn't have to tell you all this, but that's how I see it and we need to take remedial action.

[scarletwoman]

5. Astute observation. This is important, and attention must be paid.

Luckily, Trump has an inability to sustain focus - he is likely to step on his own messages over time.

[progree]

2. About the economy, Trump says: (and the full context)

AP:

He boasted of adding more than 10 million jobs since May, without mentioning that’s only about half of the jobs lost since the pandemic began. He also said the unemployment rate “plunged” to 8.4%. It was a sharper decline than many economists expected from the prior month, but economists broadly view the latest report as evidence that further economic improvement will be sluggish.

AP:

Only about half the 22 million jobs that vanished in the pandemic have been recovered

.

On the unemployment rate, it was 4.7% in January 2017 when Obama left office {1}. And there is a HUGE discrepancy in the number of unemployed in the BLS statistic that is behind the 8.4% unemployment rate ( 13.6 million {2} ) and the number in all programs claiming unemployment benefits ( 29.2 million {3} )

{1} Unemployment rate per BLS 9/4 jobs report: https://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS14000000

{2} Number of unemployed per BLS 9/4 jobs report: http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/LNS13000000

{3} From Thursday 9/3 DOL/BLS report on uninsurance claims https://www.dol.gov/ui/data.pdf

The total number of people claiming benefits in all programs for the week ending August 15 was 29,224,546, an increase of 2,195,835 from the previous week. There were 1,639,622 persons claiming benefits in all programs in the comparable week in 2019.

[keithbvadu2]

3. Donald has most of his products made overseas.

He would rather hire illegals (his term) than pay Americans.

[progree]

4. Dow down 537 points (1.91%) S&P 500 down 2.06% (equiv to Dow down 580) 1054a ET /nt