Jeeps Made w/American Steel by Union Workers in Toledo
CLEVELAND — Hillary Clinton entered the final phase of her campaign on Friday, working to ensure a victory that is decisive enough to earn a mandate for her presidency and a surge of voters to help Democrats win congressional races.
Emerging from a nine-day absence from the trail, Mrs. Clinton seized on the momentum of her performance in the final presidential debate, choosing Ohio — a battleground state where she has struggled the most against Donald J. Trump — as her first stop on a four-day swing. With new polls showing Mrs. Clinton closing in on Mr. Trump in the state, her campaign is glimpsing the opportunity for a clean sweep of traditional swing states.
Reminding voters of Mr. Trump’s refusal in Wednesday’s debate to say definitively he would accept the outcome on Election Day, Mrs. Clinton said that as secretary of state she had visited countries whose leaders jailed political opponents and invalidated elections they did not win. “We know in our country the difference between leadership and dictatorship,” she said.
She also portrayed herself as a the candidate who could attract independent, undecided and even Republican voters unhappy with Mr. Trump’s campaign. “I want to say something to people who may be reconsidering their support of my opponent,” she said. “I know you still may have questions for me, I respect that. I want to answer them. I want to earn your vote.”
Her stop here marked the start of a rare multiday tour of swing states as the Clinton campaign revved up its efforts to decisively defeat Mr. Trump on Nov. 8, including releasing a powerful minute-long ad featuring Khizr Khan, the father of a Muslim American soldier killed in Iraq. The ad featuring Mr. Khan, who was attacked by Mr. Trump after he spoke at the Democratic convention, will run in Ohio, Florida, Pennsylvania and North Carolina, as well as other crucial states.
— Hillary Clinton Makes Pitch for Mandate and a Swing-State Sweep, Trip Gabriel and Ashley Parker, New York Times, today
She knows some voters still may have questions for me, and she respects that and wants to answer them, and earn her listeners’ vote? Does she think those questions are whether or not she would accept the outcome on Election Day if she lost? And about whether as president she’d trash families of fallen U.S. Armed Services members who are Muslim, and attempt to categorically keep Muslims from immigrating here?
Who does she think that reminding voters of Trump’s actions and words of those sorts, including ones that has dominated the news and internet since last Wednesday night, is concerned about whether Clinton would do these things?
Clinton obviously thinks that these things are the only things that moderates and mainstream Republicans would support her about. That’s what’s been at the heart of her campaign from its inception to, apparently, this very minute. And it’s why she’ll win only because of who her opponent is, and why Dem Senate candidates are struggling so hard.
Paul Krugman keeps pushing the line that Clinton actually is a terrific candidate, and by golly she’d be way ahead against Rubio or another mainstream Republican, partly because those candidates’ policy agendas and base-baiting lines are mostly pretty similar to Trump’s. He’s right about mainstream Republican candidates’ policy agendas and, certainly, about the meaning of the Rubio bot. But he probably still would be very much in the running to beat Clinton—who herself is trapped in a bot.
Meanwhile, yesterday, there was this little news story:
Ohio Sen. Sherrod Brown and a staffer were in a car crash in the senator’s home state on Thursday, but have been released after receiving treatment for minor injuries at a Cleveland area hospital.
The Columbus Dispatch reports that Brown and the staffer were driving from Columbus to Brown’s home in Cleveland when they were hit by another car around 4 p.m.
Brown, a Democrat, thanked hospital staff and the makers of his Jeep Cherokee in a statement to the newspaper. “[M]y Jeep Cherokee, made with American steel by union workers in Toledo, made all the difference in allowing us to walk away from this crash, a little stiff, but unharmed,” he said.
Brown reaffirmed his thanks in a Twitter post on Friday: “Thx for care & concern. Doing fine. Grateful to Parma police, medical staff & my Jeep made w/American steel by union workers in Toledo,” he wrote.
The Dispatch also reports that “Brown’s rescue dog Franklin, strapped in with a harness, was uninjured.”
— Sherrod Brown treated for minor injuries after car crash, Madeline Conway, Politico
I don’t doubt that the ad featuring Mr. Khan is powerful. But I do doubt that it will sway many wavering Rust Belters, because they already know Mr. Khan’s message.
Had the Clinton stranglehold on the Democratic Party apparatus (certainly including donors) not elbowed out the very thought of any progressive other than Bernie Sanders—who ran only because no other progressive would—Sherrod Brown I think would have. And would be about to witness a largely-progressive Democratic wave not seen since Franklin Roosevelt’s death.
Instead, Democrats may not even retake the Senate.
Even Franklin probably knows that things such as NLRB appointments would be good to mention in Ohio. Maybe he can tell Clinton. Since her campaign gurus apparently haven’t.
____
ADDENDUM: Gail Collins’s NYT column today, titled “Don’t Take Donald Trump to Dinner,” is mostly about Trump’s jarring use of the annual Catholic Charities dinner in NYC a few days ago as just another forum for his usual ugly comments about Clinton. But Collins also said this:
In a perfect world, Hillary Clinton would then have gotten up and given the most good-natured speech in political history, scrapping all the barbed lines in her prepared script, like the one about how a Trump White House would be awkward for gatherings of the ex-presidents (“How is Barack going to get past the Muslim ban?”). But she didn’t change a word, because Clinton is not a spontaneous politician.
If this were a normal election, we could have a very interesting discussion about how programmed she can be, and whether that would be a problem if she’s elected. But as things stand, unless we discover she’s actually an android, there’s just no point.
I wouldn’t have expected Clinton to spontaneously scrap her prepared speech and give an entirely off-the-cuff one, and at least that joke that Collins quoted was funny and pointed at Trump’s and the alt-right’s actual words and positions.
But this is a person who genuinely seems unable to take a breath on her own, and who apparently delegated to campaign consultants and advisors her campaign’s very raison d’être. G.W. Bush did the same. But that was unusual. And it was a very different political era, although Clinton and her circle hadn’t noticed this until Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump forced them to belatedly, and even then not really. Or at least not fully. Even yet.
We have no choice now but to look forward, not backward. But anyone who thinks that had either one run, Elizabeth Warren or Sherrod Brown would not be about to usher in a genuinely progressive era, is willfully blind. That is precisely because a Warren or a Brown campaign’s raison d’être would be Warren’s or Brown’s own raison d’être as politicians to begin with, argued eloquently and passionately, and contrasted to their Republican opponent’s and the Republican Party’s—in their own words, their own sentences, their own paragraphs.
Added 10/22 at 4:40 p.m.
The whole steel issue is a red hering, it is not foreign competition but rather efficiency that reduced the size of the steel industry by 80%. It was the change over from open hearth to basic oxygen furnaces with a 1000 fold productivity increase, moving from ingot to continuous casting and the rise of minimills that don’t have blast furnaces but re-use scrap steel that lead to the decrease from 10 to 1.9 hours of labor per ton of steel from 1980 till today. One example cited by Smil in Still the iron Age, is that employment at the Gary works of US steel went from 30k to 5 k while capacity increased from 6.2 to 7.5 million tons per year with the employment decrease. This is why the US still has a steel industry. Note that 2/3 of steel is now made from scrap, which for example is why US steel is closing its blast furnace in Birmingham Ala, and puting in an electric arc furnace in its place (as minimills do). In fact Smil states that basic aluminum now employs as many folks as basic steel in the US.
Lyle, you’re certainly right about the impact of technological efficiency, in steel production and other manufacturing industries. But the fact is that China does import a lot of steel to this country, and also that Trump’s I guess new Las Vegas hotel was built with Chinese steel, as was Trump Tower in the 1980s.
The fact that so much of the decline in manufacturing jobs is because of technological advances has received way too little attention in this campaign. Clinton should have made it a larger point, but she does clearly know that that’s true.
Okay, maybe. Certainly I wish Brown or Warren had run and won, but I’m a bit skeptical about whether they would be ushering us into a new age of progressivism. The best thing about them is that they would probably have a better chance of winning again in 2020. I am terrified that we’re about to get a very ineffective one term president and then a nightmare rollback to the Stone Age and a final concession of defeat in the struggle to save the climate that has only just begun to be fought. But maybe we’re both wrong and krugmans right, and HRC will surprise on the upside!
Best wishes for a decent future,
Eric
well, i’m all in favor of modern manufacturing. but that still leaves the problem of what are we going to do about the workers.
let them all become wall mart associates or mcdonald’s hamburger university grads. or maybe they can all become computer programmers… oops, that’s another job that is falling to modern methods.
or, maybe we could let the workers take a share in the new prosperity (all this miracle of modern manufacturing) and work shorter hours, or even get paid what a human being is worth (like the full cost of a reasonably decent living including medical care and retirement).
not likely. you have a ruling class trapped in the lie they made up a two hundred years ago when it only made sense in the long run… while workers suffered badly in the short run… and now doesn’t even make sense in the long run.. that is, that all those workers would find new, better, jobs as economies grew.
now, maybe this is still true, maybe. but the question is what are we going to do in the short run.
i would suggest as a first step that we actually have and enforce regulations against predatory business models.
and then, maybe find a better way of living than run, run, run, spend,spend, spend… except when you can’t.
at least start thinking about it.
i mean, what if it turns out that half (at least) of the people can’t, really can’t, “get the education they need for the modern world”?
If technological change has driven work force reduction. What is your issue? Hope you have read Sandwichman.
Obviously, technological change is not the only thing that’s driven workforce reduction. Many manufacturing jobs have in fact moved to Mexico, and many U.S. manufacturing companies–of all sorts–no longer exist because the work is done overseas by, say, Foxconn, and whole industries, like the textile industry, do employ a lot of people, but in Asia, not here.
And as I said, China IS manufacturing steel and dumping it in this country. And if that weren’t so, there would be more union workers making steel in Toledo. But as Brown had the mental quickness to note, there still are enough union steel workers in Toledo to make enough steel to supply Chrysler’s Jeep plants with it.
Which really gets to what my issue is: That Clinton couldn’t come up with a straight, relevant point about an economics issue on the spur of the moment to save her life. Nor does she seem interested in saying much of anything about such things anyway. She just repeats the litany of Trump’s lowest hits, and really pretty much says nothing more.
The key problems with Democratic Party and Hillary is that they lost working class and middle class voters, becoming another party of highly paid professionals and Wall Street speculators (let’s say top 10%, not just 1%), the party of neoliberal elite.
It will be interesting to see if yet another attempt to “bait and switch” working class and lower middle class works this time. I think it will not. Even upper middle class is very resentful of Democrats and Hillary. So many votes will be not “for” but “against”. This is the scenario Democratic strategists fear the most, but they can do nothing about it.
She overplayed “identity politics” card. Her “identity politics” and her fake feminism are completely insincere. She is completely numb to human suffering and interests of females and minorities. Looks like she has a total lack of empathy for other people.
Here is one interesting quote (
)
“What scares me is my knowledge of her career-long investment in trying to convince the generals and the admirals that she is a ‘tough bitch’, ala Margaret Thatcher, who will not hesitate to pull the trigger. An illuminating article in the NY Times (http://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/24/magazine/how-hillary-clinton-became-a-hawk.html?_r=1 ) revealed that she always advocates the most muscular and reckless dispositions of U.S. military forces whenever her opinion is solicited. ”
Usually people are resentful about Party which betrayed them so many times. It would be interesting to see how this will play this time.
It will be interesting to see if yet another attempt to “bait and switch” working class and lower middle class works this time?
Yup. The Republicans definitely have the interests of the working class and lower middle class at heart when they give, and propose, ever deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, the repeal of the estate tax that by now applies only to estates of more than $5 million, complete deregulation of the finance industry, industry capture of every federal regulatory agency and cabinet department and commission or board, from the SEC, to the EPA, to the Interior Dept. (in order to hand over to the oil, gas and timber industries vast parts of federal lands), the FDA, the FTC, the FCC, the NLRB, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Justice Dept. (including the Antitrust Division)—to name only some.
And OF COURSE it’s to serve the interests of the working class and lower middle class that they concertedly appoint Supreme Court justices and lower federal court judges that are unabashed proxies of big business.
And then there’s the incessant push to privatize Social Security and Medicare. It ain’t the Dems that are pushing that.
You’re drinking wayyy too much Kool Aid, likbez. Or maybe just reading too much Ayn Rand, at Paul Ryan’s recommendation.
This column is another clear example why liberals are the worst team mates in the world. And another clear reason why the government of this country has moved so far right over the last several decades.
If it is not perfect(and “it” goes from campaign speeches to major acts of legislation) and fits every single liberals idea of “perfect”(;ike every single one of Sanders’ speeches) it sucks.
Meanwhile, we cannot take control of the Congress because of this simple fact of life combined with the fact that the Rep Party only has to say “government bad” and “those people” and can stay afloat despite growing demographic changes. Not because of their numbers, but because of their common sense.
Now, considering that half(I think that number is actually too low) of their voters are racist and religious bigots how is it possible that they have more common sense that liberal voters? Cause a lot of liberals want perfect, and in the pursuit of perfect they could care less if they destroy good.
This is clearly shown by columns like this and throughout the social and other media, that serve only to depress the votes of Democrats.
An analogy of this from the world of golf. There are basically two ball flights in golf, a fade or a draw ( hook). The difference is the spin imparted on the ball. A fade will hit the ground and stop very quickly; a hook will hit the ground and accelerate. (yeah, times and equipment have changed but it is still true).
Lee Trevino once said:
“You can talk to a fade but a hook won’t listen”.
You can talk to a centrist but a Republican won’t listen.
Yet some liberals think attacking Dems makes sense.
I would suggest despite most of the elite in both parties supporting Hillary, and saying she has the election in the bag. In my opinion the fact that Trump rallies still has large attendance; where Hillary’s rallies would have trouble filling up a large room; is a better indication that Trump will win.
Even democrats are not voting democratic this time to be ignored till election again.
geez
Yeah, the number of people that go to rallies has anything to do with an election.
Missed the Dem primary, huh?
What % of the electorate do you think attend Trump rallies?
Bueller? Bueller?
The Dem primary had the same result Bernie filled the stadiums; Hillary was lucky to have attendees. Then at the Dem convention after Bernie lost; attendance was so bad that they had to pay bus loads to attend to fill all the empty sets.
good lord
You give me rally attendance numbers that showed the person with the most attendees lost the election?
wow. just wow.
I believe that (wow) many democrats had the same felling, and is probably the reason they left the democratic convention hall leaving it so empty.
To you even bother to read what you write?
First you say the attendance at Trump’s rallies is a better indication of his chance to win than the polls. Then you talk about the reduced attendance at Clinton’s rallies than Bernie’s rallies.
News flash
Bernie did not win.
Another news flash.
Before you start talking about “busing in” people to fill the seats at the Dem Convention, you should try to figure out where the people attending the Convention stayed; and the closure of public transportation in much of Phila during the convention.
You have no basis for the vast majority of the garbage you spout.
Beverly,
=== quote ===
Yup. The Republicans definitely have the interests of the working class and lower middle class at heart when they give, and propose, ever deeper tax cuts for the wealthy, the repeal of the estate tax that by now applies only to estates of more than $5 million, complete deregulation of the finance industry, industry capture of every federal regulatory agency and cabinet department and commission or board, from the SEC, to the EPA, to the Interior Dept. (in order to hand over to the oil, gas and timber industries vast parts of federal lands), the FDA, the FTC, the FCC, the NLRB, the Consumer Product Safety Commission, and the Justice Dept. (including the Antitrust Division)—to name only some.
And OF COURSE it’s to serve the interests of the working class and lower middle class that they concertedly appoint Supreme Court justices and lower federal court judges that are unabashed proxies of big business.
=== end of quote ===
This is all true. But Trump essentially running not as a Republican but as an independent on (mostly) populist platform (with elements of nativism). That’s why a large part of Republican brass explicitly abandoned him. That does not exclude that he easily will be co-opted after the election, if he wins.
And I would not be surprised one bit if Dick Cheney, Victoria Nuland, Paul Wolfowitz and Perle vote for Hillary. Robert Kagan and papa Bush already declared such an intension. She is a neocon. A wolf in sheep clothing, if we are talking about real anti-war democrats, not the USA brand of DemoRats. She is crazy warmonger, no question about it, trying to compensate a complete lack of diplomatic skills with jingoism and saber rattling.
The problem here might be that you implicitly idealize Hillary and demonize Trump.
I would agree that Trump is horrible candidate. The candidate who (like Hillary) suggests complete degeneration of the US neoliberal elite.
But the problem is that Hillary is even worse. Much worse and more dangerous because in addition to being a closet Republican she is also a warmonger. In foreign policy area she is John McCain in pantsuit. And if you believe that after one hour in White House she does not abandon all her election promises and start behaving like a far-right republican in foreign policy and moderate republican in domestic policy, it’s you who drunk too much Cool Aid.
That’s what classic neoliberal DemoRats “bait and switch” maneuver (previously executed by Obama two times) means. And that’s why working class now abandoned Democratic Party. Even Unions member of unions which endorses Clinton are expected to vote 3:1 against her. Serial betrayal of interests of working class (and lower middle class) after 25 years gets on nerve. Not that their choice is wise, but they made a choice. This is “What’s the matter with Kansas” all over again.
It reminds me the situation when Stalin was asked whether right revisionism of Marxism (social democrats) or left (Trotskyites with their dream of World revolution) are better. He answered “both are worse” :-).
In other words, the USA now is in the political position that in chess is called Zugzwang,
We face a choice between the compulsive liar, unrepentant, extremely dangerous and unstable warmonger with failing health vs. a bombastic, completely unprepared to governance of such a huge county crook.
Of course, we need also remember about existence of “deep state” which make each of them mostly a figurehead, but still power of “deep state” is not absolute and this is a very sad situation.
Good grace.
Two points: First, you apparently are unaware of Trump’s proposed tax plan, written by Heritage Foundation economists and political-think-tank types. It’s literally more regressively extreme evn than Paul Ryan’s. It gives tax cuts to the wealthy that are exponentially more generous percentage-wise than G.W. Bush’s two tax cuts together were, it eliminates the estate tax, and it gives massive tax cuts to corporations, including yuge ones.
Two billionaire Hamptons-based hedge funders, Robert Mercer and his daughter Rebekah, have been funding a super PAC for Trump and since late spring have met with Trump and handed him policy proposals and suggestions for administrative agency heads and judicial appointments. Other yuge funders are members of the Ricketts family, including Thomas Ricketts, CEO of TD Ameritrade and a son of its founder.
Two other billionaires funding Trump: Forrest Lucas, founder of Lucas Oil and reportedly Trump’s choice for Interior Secretary if you and the working class and lower middle class folks whose interests Trump has at heart get their way.
And then there’s Texas oil billionaire Harold Hamm, Trump’s very first billionaire mega-donor.
One of my recurring pet peeves about Clinton and her campaign is her failure to tell the public that these billionaires are contributing mega-bucks to help fund Trump’s campaign, and to tell the public who exactly they are. As well as her failure to make a concerted effort to educate the public about the the specifics of Trump’s fiscal and deregulatory agenda as he has published it.
As for your belief that I idolize Clinton, you obviously are very new to Angry Bear. I was a virulent Sanders supporter throughout the primaries, to the very end. In 2008 I originally supported John Edwards during the primaries and then, when it became clear that it was a two-candidate race, supported Obama. My reason? I really, really, REALLY did not want to see another triangulation Democratic administration. That’s largely what we got during Obama;s first term, though, and I was not happy about it.
Bottom line: I’m not the gullible one here. You are.
Sorry; make that “idealize Clinton,” not “idolize Clinton.”
You demonstrate complete inability to weight the gravity of two dismal but unequal in their gravity options.
All your arguments about Supreme Court justices, taxes, inheritance and other similar things make sense if and only if the country continues to exit.
Which is not given due to the craziness and the level of degeneration of neoliberal elite and specifically Hillary (“no fly zone in Syria” is one example of her craziness). Playing chicken with a nuclear power for the sake of proving imperial dominance in Middle East is a crazy policy.
Neocons rules the roost in both parties, which essentially became a single War Party with two wings. Trump looks like the only chance somewhat to limit their influence and reach some détente with Russia. .
Looks like you organically unable to understand that your choice in this particular case is between the decimation of the last remnants of the New Deal and a real chance of WWIII.
This is not “pick your poison” situation. those are two events of completely difference magnitude: one is reversible (and please note that Trump is bound by very controversial obligations to his electorate and faces hostile Congress), the other is not.
We all should do our best to prevent the unleashing WWIII even if that means temporary decimation of the remnants of New Deal
Neoliberalism after 2008 entered zombie state so while it is still strong aggressive and bloodthirsty it might not last for long. And in such cases the defeat of democratic forces on domestic front is temporary.
That means vote against Hillary.
Bev,
Talking to a kitchen table is more fun than talking to that person.
Likbez I agree with you views 100% and thanks for your efforts to convince but most stubborn at the AB you will not. I know and have tried like you but the horse refuses to drink the water. No matter what you say to them, they cannot and refuse to see the wisdom of what you are saying because they have been blinded by the trash capital of HRC. They do not believe in the reputation community as the new currency of trust as the new capital that is soon to be rated and scored on everybody’s Facebook page. It will be a lot like ones credit score but soon also on every resume. If we had this today for HRC her trust-reputation score would be so low that she could never possibly even run for president. We all know this but perhaps after HRC gets impeached her VP Mr. Kaine will have to pick up the many broken pieces of more govt. failure….