Posted on 06/15/2004 2:56:15 PM PDT by Brilliant
ATLANTIC CITY, June 14 - Senator John Kerry served notice Monday that he still considered the economy a central vulnerability for President Bush despite strong employment growth in recent months.
Beginning a two-week focus on the economy, officials with the Democratic challenger's campaign argued that Mr. Bush's record should be judged on his entire tenure, not on the turnaround of the past few months.
"If you get D-minuses for three and a half years in college, one semester of a B-minus does not get you on the honor roll," said Gene Sperling, who was a top economic adviser to President Bill Clinton and is now advising Mr. Kerry.
"Our economy doesn't recover after three and a half extremely weak years of job creation with just a few positive months,'' Mr. Sperling added.
Moreover, the Kerry campaign asserted, the quality of many of those new jobs, the shift to employment in lower-paying industries with scanty benefits and the pressures of rising health, education and energy costs have combined to create an increasingly strained middle class. The campaign issued a report Monday indicating that 1.6 million households filed for bankruptcy in 2003, up a third from 2000.
Bush campaign officials fired back, with a spokesman, Steve Schmidt, mocking Mr. Kerry for "his pessimism and misery tour.''
"Senator Kerry ignores the good economic news,'' Mr. Schmidt added, "and plays to people's fears and anxieties."
But Mr. Kerry, signaling the themes of the next few weeks, suggested that it was Mr. Bush who was out of touch. Landing here in Atlantic City to attend a fund-raising reception Monday night and then speak to the New Jersey A.F.L.-C.I.O. on Tuesday, he declared, "We're here to make sure that Americans get a job where if you work, and work hard, you can actually pay your bills at the end of the day."
"I've met parents all over this country who are struggling to be able to send their kids to school,'' he added. "Where 20 years ago one job allowed them to send their kid to college, now two barely does it."
Mark Mellman, the Kerry campaign's pollster, said voters overwhelmingly agreed with this more sober assessment of the economy, in several recent polls giving Mr. Bush decidedly poor ratings on his economic stewardship. Mr. Mellman said that voters felt besieged by rising prices and that they expected interest rates to rise soon and make their household budgets even worse.
The Kerry campaign officials brushed aside any notion that they would be perceived as this year's version of what Republicans have sometimes called "doom and gloom" Democrats. The Kerry aides said this was a year very different from 1984 and 1988, when such depictions proved effective against the Democratic nominees, Walter F. Mondale and Michael S. Dukakis.
In general, Kerry advisers, buoyed by recent polls showing a tight race and continued problems for Mr. Bush, projected a decidedly bullish air at a briefing for the press in Washington on Monday. Mary Beth Cahill, Mr. Kerry's campaign manager, described Mr. Bush as "a rudderless incumbent" who had engaged in a campaign of negative ads rather than positive proposals for the future, a calculation that Kerry advisers argue will ultimately be proved decisively wrong.
Tad Devine, a senior adviser to the Kerry campaign, declared, "I think it's fair to say that John Kerry won the spring general election, and I think he won it decisively."
Mr. Kerry is expected to take his economic argument this week to Ohio and Michigan, in a region achingly sensitive to the loss of good-paying manufacturing jobs.
Mr. Sperling conceded at the briefing Monday that Mr. Bush was not entirely to blame for the economic troubles of the past three and a half years.
"No question, George Bush had a couple of bad breaks on his watch,'' Mr. Sperling said, "most specifically 9/11 and the slowing economy of 2001. But he also inherited 4.1 percent unemployment, a doubling of productivity, the strongest fiscal situation in our country, and he had a Congress that three different times did what he wanted'' on tax and economic policy.
The two economic views clashed throughout the day. Even as the Kerry campaign was briefing, the Commerce Department was hailing "strong" retail sales growth in May. Commerce Secretary Donald L. Evans declared, "More Americans are going on spending sprees at shopping malls as more people are finding well-paying jobs" thanks to "President Bush's leadership."
In fact, if Kerry and his liberal buddies had not delayed and reduced the size of Bush's tax cuts, we might never have had a recession at all.
It also means that the VP choice is either Vilsak or Gephardt
We have to Judge the Bus economy on the last eyar because it took two years to get back the economy Clinton dropped into the toilet.
Neither will the interest rate hikes that Greenspan is gonna hit us with because Dubya's been spending like a drunken sailor.
Still waiting for some Republican leader to say:
"We don't know why John Kerry is running for President. He's already King of the Second-Guessers!"
If I were in poverty, living under a bridge, I'd still consider I was better off under Bush.
One thing that hasn't gotten much play is the stat behind our 4.2% GDP growth.You see, our most recent Quarter's GDP growth was published as being 4.2%...but what most people don't know is that figure was inflation adjusted down.
The actual growth in the size of our economy was 7.9%.
What was published was the more conservative 4.2% inflation-adjusted figure.
But salaries, spending, business expansions, new manufacturing, home sales, et al were all contributing to a 7.9% growth in the size of our economy.
7.9%
Our economy is flat out BOOMING!
Can't wait to hear Kerry's concession speech in November.
Kerry is obviously the spawn of anti-war left-wing radicals who disrupted the 1968 DNC convention in Chicago.
They have absolutely nothing substantive or constructive to offer the nation.
Unfortunately, neocon "compassionate conservatism" is more akin to LBJ's Big Government "Great Society", simultaneously funding "The War on Poverty" along with "The War on Terror" without the slightest consideration as to who's gonna pay for it.
True conservatives are not represented by either Republicrat faction in this year's election.
And what does John F Kerry recommend? Not everyone can find a wealthy widow to sponge off of.
"True conservatives are not represented by either Republicrat faction in this year's election."
The Old Moby Troll is still at it. His job decrying GW has be as rewarding as the Maytag Repairman.
Neither are protectionist isolationists, huh? Sitting this one out? :o)
King of the Second-Guessers!
Here is a quote I read today that seems to fit JF'nK.
It was written by Sir Wilfred Lawson about Prime Minister
Balfour.Circa 1903.
"I'm not for Free Trade, and I'm not for Protection,
I approve of them both and to both have objection.
In going through life I continually find,
it's a terrible business to make up one's mind.
So in spite of all comments, reproach and predictions
I firmly adhere to unsettled convictions."
You're claiming they revised the figure downward by 46.8% (almost cutting it in half) as an adjustment for inflation?
That's one helluva inflation rate we're experiencing.
Either that, or you've gone back to ingesting hallucinogens again.
No, I'm simply saying that they subtracted 3.7% inflation from 7.9% GDP growth to get the 4.2% that was reported.
I thought that was pretty obvious and self-explanatory.
It's the same with investments. If I have a mutual fund that returned 7.9% last year, but inflation (cost of living) went up by 3.7%, then my REAL rate of return was only 4.2%. That's how much REAL growth in purchasing power I have.
I'm not sure why some (I think we know who) find that hard to comprehend.
So I was right, you ARE hallucinating.
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