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"Tell you what, why not let's just put this thread on CSpan as an advertisement for the Republican Candidate for the Presidency and see how the public responds, shall we?"

Actually, I've counted at least four recent articles that the liberals have run in the mainstream press in their attempt to make this a big issue.

But there simply isn't any interest in the matter. The vast majority of Americans are employed, after all, and that's hardly a group of people to be sympathetic to that 5.7% of our population who is out on the street at the moment.

You can howl as much as you like in public about "outsourcing," and you may even find a few fellow unemployed posters to comiserate with, but it's not going to be a big campaign issue.

The unions didn't even bother to yell at Clinton for getting NAFTA ratified in the Senate.

On the other hand, Bush's mere implementation of steel tariffs caused prices to rise and yells to be heard around the world. Protectionism simply isn't politically viable.

Or put another way: you can't yell enough to get politicians to give you your old job back. It's gone. Bye, bye.

And you can't sue it back with lawyers or legislate it back with politicians. Just like phone switchboard operators being replaced with computers and newspaper boys being replaced with street vending machines, so too are IT jobs being replaced by better network management software (in the case of system administrators) and by better design software (in the case of Java programmers) and by foreign programmers (in those cases where mere mindless grunt work is required - hey, just because it is "IT" doesn't mean that it is high tech).

But there simply isn't any interest in the matter.

No interest in the matter is why the polls have gone south and Bush's poll numbers are taking a huge hit on the jobs issue. Right. Care to yank our chains on that one again. The reason the Democrats are on it is because it is getting response - else they would have dropped it already. They needed an issue and you guys gave them one. Everyone with a job that doesn't require that job to be here in the states is worried about losing it now. And you can't pacify that with swipes at them being responsible for losing their own jobs. My home town employs workers from Chrysler, Benz, & Delphi. Delphi is packing up and leaving for mexico this summer to take advantage of slave labor, that will be a massive hit to the middle class. And if you think for one second they won't blame a President that said it's good for them to lose their jobs on national TV, you're out of your bloody mind. If you think the Unions won't back Kerry, you're nuts. And if you think that chunk of the Middle class won't have legs going after us, you sir are from another planet.

When people who have temp jobs because they can't get real jobs are counted in, it is more like 12-13% unemployment. So pretending that everything is just hunky dory is rather oblivious. Last year 1 in 73 households filed for bankruptcy. Foreclosures are at record levels. Credit card delinquency rates are at record levels. If that sounds like prosperity to you I have a bridge to sell you.

You can howl as much as you like in public about "outsourcing," and you may even find a few fellow unemployed posters to comiserate with, but it's not going to be a big campaign issue.

Then why aren't Bush's trend lines heading north ? Why is the "the country is on the wrong track" number climbing above 50% ? Tell me how an incumbent can be reelected if over 50% of the American people feel the country is on the wrong track. Why do more Americans define jobs and economy than terrorism/Iraq as the most important issue in this election ? Or are you dimly aware that of the 308,000 new jobs that were supposed to have been created, 296,000 were seasonal or temporary ?

The unions didn't even bother to yell at Clinton for getting NAFTA ratified in the Senate.

And the unions most definitely gave Clinton hell over NAFTA. The only way it passed was that Newt Gingrich and the Republicans voted for it. But it availed Clinton nothing because by forfeiting economic populism as an issue the Democrats had no weapon with which to counter GOP strength on social issues. Without economic populism the Democrats under Clinton lost the House, the Senate, and governorship after mayoralty.

What is quite significant about the whole NAFTA fight is that the Christian Coalition refused Ralph Reed's request that they support it. There is a real clash of interest here between working class social and cultural conservatives with populist economic interests (who after all are the children of New Deal Democrats and William Jennings Bryan populists) and the kind of elite economic interests you advocate. To be a Christian, after all, is to see people as more than expendable units, and to value small to medium sized businesses rooted in place and community over the MNC with its "citizen of the world" mentality. The Carolinas are in intense pain over the destruction of their manufacturing infrastructure. I think they are in play. So are the battleground rust belt states. The party that fights outshoring and offshoring head on will be the majority party for the next generation.

It is simple enough to find ways to reverse outsourcing with strong protectionist measures (and before you start denouncing protectionism, it was the conservative economic policy for nearly 200 years under which this country became strong) and security provisions. For instance if the average American were asked, "Do you want your financial and health data processed by someone making a pittance in the Third World ?", he would respond with horror, No. Why not give him the choice of saying "no" ? Why not give financial service customers the power to require signed authorizations from them before "outsourcing" their vital data ? The current situation has already generated a few identity theft and account pilfering horror stories.