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.
Clinton was re-elected in 1996 with only 49% of the popular vote.
The papers claimed that Reagan's trend lines were down, too...and you can see the surprise on the faces of liberal news anchors to this very day if you watch some of the old broadcasts from November 1980 and 1984.
No, no, and no.
The unions didn't give Clinton any campaign grief over NAFTA. Newt Gingrinch was in the House, and the House doesn't ratify treaties, and it was a Democratic majority Senate in 1993 that ratified NAFTA.
No, the Administration Office of the U.S. Courts reports there were 1,661,996 bankruptcies filed across the nation in fiscal 2003 which covers the period from October 1, 2002- September 1, 2003. The U.S. Census reports that the U.S. has 291 Million legal residents as of 2003. That means that .57% of Americans filed for bankruptcy in 2003. In 1992, there were 971,517 personal bankruptcies with a population of 244 million...or .4%. That same source above also reports that " In contrast, there were 82,446 business bankruptcy filings back in 1987.