The industrial Midwest has been hard hit over the past 20+ years, as changes in manufacturing and outsourcing have affected industries and jobs there. But one major success, and one that President Obama and Dems -- particularly Hillary Clinton -- can lay exclusive claim to is the resurrection of the U.S. auto industry. "Exclusive" because Congressional Rethuglicans heatedly opposed the so-called "bailout" in the waning days of Dumbya's administration, knowing that it would hand the newly-elected President a major economic problem, not to mention it would go against their reactionary laissez faire economic philosophy (except when it involves the fossil fuel and defense industries).
But, as Patrick Caldwell points out in Mother Jones today, you won't hear the Rethuglican candidates for President and Vice President talking about the loan to the U.S. auto industry:
"If the federal government hadn't bailed out the auto industry in 2009, the state of Michigan—where Donald Trump spoke about his economic plans Monday—could have lost 338,000 jobs over two years. On Friday, the Republican nominee will be in Pennsylvania, a state that could have lost 49,000 jobs. That's according to a 2009 analysis by the Center for Automotive Research of the worst-case scenario for Chrysler and General Motors. Trump's running mate, Indiana Gov. Mike Pence, appeared on Wednesday in Ohio, which could have lost 201,000 jobs. And Pence is speaking Thursday in Wisconsin, where 44,000 people could have been put out of work."Today, the U.S. auto industry is back on its feet, well in the black, and has paid back seventy of the eighty billion dollars loaned to them. It saved the jobs noted above in several states, and made U.S. brand autos competitive in the world market. You'll hear none of this from the dangerous neo-fascist buffoon Donald "Rump" Trump or his dim running mate, because it's a success story that the Dems can run on with the blue collar workers in the industrial belt -- workers that are getting the usual dog whistles on (pick 'em) race, immigration, guns, etc. from the Rethugs. So Dems, on this achievement as the old song goes, accentuate the positive.
