The NY Reserve has a study out (there’s a thread about it here on FR, somewhere) tying the Republican refusal to extend unemployment benefits to the decline in unemployment.
Thats something that Republican candidates can and should take advantage of. Because there’s no way for the Dems to fight it. Here’s why:
Unemployment benefits are tied to people actually looking for work, right? So when the benefits were ended, a lot of the unemployed lost the incentive to even conduct cursory job searches.
Once they did that they’re no longer, technically unemployed. They’ve left the workforce. Driving down both the unemployment figure AND the labor force participation rate.
Which makes this an easy issue for Republicans to run with. They can take credit for the lower unemployment numbers, and the only way for the Dems to actually respond is to point out that those numbers are BS and draw focus to the participation rate.
Which obliterates Dem claims about an improving economy ...
Which makes this an easy issue for Republicans to run with.
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I completely agree with you but I don’t have confidence that the clueless Republicans will ever leverage your argument. For some reason, they just don’t ever play to win.