NEWS & POLITICS
TRUMPED UP: The president’s claim that he is responsible for a great economy is disproved by trade deficit and measures taken before he took office.
ONE-TERM A TRUMP BARRING AN OCTOBER SURPRISE. BY ERNEST DUMAS
16 OCTOBER 2020
ARKANSAS TIMES
rkansas was never a bellwether state — it was predictably Democratic for nearly all of its first 175 years and predictably Republican for its last 10 after the Democrats elevated a Black man to the White House — so do we offer any foresight into the big presidential election coming up in a month? Only a little, but it’s not reassuring for Donald Trump. Barring an October surprise like FBI Director Jim Comey’s false Oct. 28 bombshell on Hillary Clinton’s emails in 2016, Trump ought to lose both the national popular vote, by a much larger margin than 2.9 million this time, and even the Electoral College, which allots extra votes to sparsely populated rural states that tend to vote Republican. Sure, Trump will carry Arkansas, although not by 60.5 percent, his ninth highest percentage in the country in 2016. Midsummer Arkansas polls showing his lead over Joe Biden within the margin of error probably undercount Trump’s strength in rural areas, but the significant diminution of his vote in a state that seemed to love him so much four years ago means a potential disaster for him in most of the 20 or so battleground states. National polls and those in competitive states all year show Trump’s approval rating well below Biden’s on almost every question, especially on handling the pandemic, but they have
shown more confidence in Trump in one area — managing the economy. Voters have short memories and they always give presidents credit or blame for economic conditions they had little to do with. Actually, the economy is one of Trump’s most transparent failures, and no one should know it better than Arkansans. He inherited the most resilient economy in the nation’s history and his term will reflect the worst economic record in modern times, the first net loss of jobs of any president since Herbert Hoover. Arkansas is no outlier to the disaster, although its economy, heavily based on farming and food-based industry, rarely suffers the depths that hit richer industrial states. A few reminders. When Barack Obama took office in late January 2009, America was already 14 months into a recession and the late-autumn financial collapse was disposing of 800,000 or more jobs a month. Economists talked about another great depression and it was spreading to America’s trading partners around the globe. The national unemployment rate hit 10 percent four months into the Obama presidency before his modest stimulus, including a payroll tax cut, stanched the collapse. What followed from June 2009 was the longest sustained period of economic growth in history, eclipsing the 116 consecutive months during the Clinton presidency (though not Bill Clinton’s record 22
