Hillary Clinton’s campaign is going all in on what it believes is a winning political strategy against Donald Trump: Paint him as a dangerous menace to the country.
After slamming Trump for days as a disaster on national security in the aftermath of last weekend’s Orlando massacre, Clinton on Tuesday will unleash a similar attack on her Republican rival — this time, on the economy.
The former secretary of state is set to deliver her first general election economic speech in Columbus, Ohio, Tuesday morning. According to Clinton aides, the remarks will once again attempt to dismantle Trump’s policy prescriptions and cast the businessman as a danger to the U.S. economy.
“Clinton will outline this core proposition: If we were to put Donald Trump behind the wheel of the American economy, he would very likely drive us off a cliff and working families would bear the brunt of the impact in terms of lost jobs, lost savings, and lost livelihoods,” Jake Sullivan, Clinton’s senior policy adviser, said in a statement.
Clinton, Sullivan said, will argue Trump’s “rash and reckless temperament, and his record in the private sector of doing harm to working families and small businesses.”
Clinton’s pivot to the economy comes at a moment of peril for the Trump campaign.
The first-time political candidate is under siege for a series of missteps since clinching his party’s nomination, including his response to the Orlando terrorist attack, repeated criticism of a federal judge’s Mexican heritage, and renewed calls to ban Muslims from entering the country. Acknowledging the gravity of his political troubles, Trump on Monday fired his top aide and campaign manager, Corey Lewandowski.
But even as Trump struggles to find his footing as he transitions to the general election, the populist candidate has an edge over Clinton on the economy. Fifty-one percent of registered voters believe Trump would handle the economy better than Clinton, compared to 43% who gave better marks to Clinton, according to a CNN/ORC international poll released Tuesday morning.
Still, Democrats believe Clinton has a powerful story to tell on the economic progress the country has made under President Barack Obama’s watch.
When Obama first took office in January 2009, the unemployment rate was rapidly rising, and would peak at 10 months later at 10%. This year, the unemployment rate fell below 5% for the first time in eight years, dipping to 4.7% in May.
Jared Bernstein, a former economic adviser to Vice President Joe Biden, said a successful message on the economy for Clinton must be multi-dimensional. She must find away to tout Obama’s successes and explicitly acknowledge why so many Americans still feel stuck in a rut, Bernstein said — and, at the same time, continue to drive home why Trump’s economic platform would be catastrophic.
“The important thing is to continue the President’s message but explain how you’ll improve upon the policy agenda,” said Bernstein, who has not endorsed a candidate in the 2016 race. “She has to argue that she’ll take the ball and run with it, whereas the other guy, (Trump), will sacrifice the gains we’ve made already just on the basis of bombast and unfamiliarity on how the economy actually works.”
One data point that could help Clinton make her case against Trump: A Moody’s Analytic report that concluded Trump’s economic policies would reduce employment by 3.5 million jobs during his first term in office.
“The upshot of Mr. Trump’s economic policy positions under almost any scenario is that the U.S. economy will be more isolated and diminished,” the report said.
Clinton is expected to reference the report in her remarks at the Fort Hayes Vocational School on Tuesday. The next day, Clinton heads to Raleigh, North Carolina, where she plans to offer a detailed outline of her own economic platform.
Clinton’s Columbus speech will in part mirror her remarks in San Diego earlier this month, in which she delivered a blistering critique of Trump’s foreign policy preparedness. Clinton and her Democratic allies began using the remarks to raise money and saw an uptick in response, according to aides.
As Clinton was giving the speech, aides said, it became clear that the San Diego formula of using Trump’s own words to discredit him in an almost roast-style condemnation had the potential to be effective on other topics, including the economy.
Clinton’s San Diego speech also clearly resonated with her supporters, based on the reaction from her crowds in the week that followed, when Clinton barnstormed California ahead of the state’s primary.
Clinton herself was intimately involved in writing the San Diego speech, according to aides, working on the remarks up until the moment she took the stage. She was expected to play a similar role ahead of Tuesday’s speech in Columbus.
The San Diego remarks also highlighted Trump’s inadequate rapid response operation. The candidate waited hours to respond substantively to the critique — a fact that Democrats close to Clinton saw as a win in the days after the speech.
“Bad performance by Crooked Hillary Clinton! Reading poorly from the telepromter! She doesn’t even look presidential!” Trump tweeted as her address ended.