With No Edge on the Economy, Clinton and Trump Focus Elsewhere

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/09/09/us/politics/economy-donald-trump-hillary-clinton.html

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This year, it’s not the economy. And actually, there’s nothing stupid about that.

In 1992, with President George Bush weakened by recession, Bill Clinton made “It’s the economy, stupid” his campaign mantra. Since then, the phrase has stood for the idea that winning candidates focus on pocketbook concerns.

In 2016, however, neither Donald J. Trump nor Hillary Clinton has established a clear advantage when it comes to the economy. So while voters tell pollsters that the economy remains their most important issue, the candidates focus on other subjects.

That reflects the unique contours of the race this year and the middling state of the United States economy.

Businesses have added 15 million jobs since 2010, the start of the longest streak of private-sector job creation in United States history. Unemployment has fallen to 4.9 percent after peaking at 10 percent after the 2008 financial crisis and subsequent recession.

Those gains silenced the cries of “Where are the jobs?” that helped Republicans recapture the House of Representatives in 2010. They undercut claims of “job killing” consequences from the Affordable Care Act, President Obama’s health care plan, which helped Republicans win the Senate four years later.

Now Republicans are focusing on lackluster economic expansion, citing the 1.1 percent annual growth rate in gross domestic product in the second quarter of this year. Government data shows that the recovery from this recession has been the most sluggish of any since World War II.

That only tells part of the story. The economists Kenneth Rogoff and Carmen Reinhart, leading experts on the effects of financial crises, say the United States economy has recovered better than those of nearly all other advanced countries since the global economic disaster of 2008, and more rapidly than the historical average after previous meltdowns.

Yet President Obama himself calls economic progress inadequate, which helps affirm the Republican critique. So did a Democratic primary campaign in which Mrs. Clinton competed with Senator Bernie Sanders of Vermont over proposals to curb income inequality and lift long-stagnant wages.

The candidates’ backgrounds further complicate attempts to seize the economic issue.

Mr. Trump’s wealth and business career award him a presumption of economic competence from some voters. His denunciation of international trade agreements resonates with those who’ve lost ground in the era of globalization.

But Mr. Trump evinces little interest in economic policy specifics beyond his pledge to make “great deals.” He revamped his tax-cut plan in response to criticism that his first version would balloon the federal budget deficit.

Mrs. Clinton benefits from memories of prosperity during her husband’s presidency. She offers detailed plans to increase infrastructure spending, expand child care for working parents and encourage companies to share profits with workers without increasing the deficit.

Yet she inherits accumulated discontent with the party that has held the White House since Mr. Obama took office in 2009. By publicly renouncing the Trans-Pacific Partnership, a trade deal she once heralded as “the gold standard,” she has broken with Mr. Obama and with her husband’s free-trade legacy.

The result: In a Fox News poll last week, registered voters split evenly, 48 percent apiece, on whether Mr. Trump or Mrs. Clinton would handle the economy better.

So Mr. Trump emphasizes his signature issue of immigration. That has gained him fervent support among voters who feel most aggrieved by America’s changing demography, particularly white voters without college educations.

As the self-described law-and-order candidate, Mr. Trump casts immigration largely as an issue of personal safety. In assailing Mrs. Clinton, he focuses on her vulnerability surrounding issues of trustworthiness.

Mrs. Clinton levels the broadest possible attack on Mr. Trump, calling him “temperamentally unfit” for the White House. Vowing to be “a president for all Americans,” she accuses him of fostering racial and ethnic “prejudice and paranoia.”

Her invocation of race represents a landmark shift in circumstances. For her husband, economic appeals offset Democratic weakness on cultural issues within an electorate that in 1992 was 87 percent white.

The nonwhite electorate has more than doubled since then. For a Democrat in 2016, emphasizing cultural issues isn’t stupid at all.