Indiana’s Republican governor, Mike Pence, said Wednesday that Elkhart had rebounded “in spite of Obama’s policies” and that those policies inflicted onerous federal burdens on Indiana.
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“Trump is a more colorful character than some of the other Republican elected officials” but his criticisms of Obama are “entirely consistent” with his party, the president said.
With more grey hair but no political office to seek, President Obama evoked the campaign passion that propelled him to the White House eight years ago, challenging presumptive Republican nominee Donald Trump in his most pointed assault on the NY businessman to date.
According to the RealClearPolitics average, the president has received roughly an equal amount of support and disapproval for his handling of the US economy in recent months. “We are going to bring back jobs like we haven’t seen in this country for many, many decades”.
Obama didn’t break his silence on the Democratic nomination fight between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Vermont Senator Bernie Sanders.
Asked later why he rarely mentions Trump’s name, Obama said the businessman is better at marketing himself than the Democratic candidates.
In another dig at Trump, Obama said “provocative” tweets are not good reasons to support any candidate. He acted boldly to reinvest in our economy; to rescue the auto industry; to cut taxes for working families and strengthen the safety net for unemployed workers; to help struggling homeowners refinance their mortgages; and to shore up the financial system. Republicans are pushing forward a message that’s “anti-government, anti-immigrant, anti-trade, and let’s face it, anti-change”, he said, and he was ringing the alarm in Elkhart because “this county votes Republican”. He denounced what he called the GOP’s “cult of small government”. Bernie Sanders and Trump have raised concerns about U.S.jobs going overseas due to foreign trade agreements, but Obama said, “trade has helped our country a lot more than it has hurt”.
Obama’s remarks in Elkhart, Indiana, foreshadowed the arguments he is likely to make on the campaign trail this fall against the likely Republican presidential nominee. President Obama first came to Elkhart in the early days of his presidency.
When Obama first visited Elkhart in 2009, the county’s unemployment rate had spiked to the highest in the nation, hovering around 20 percent.
“Elkhart is, in fact, a symbol of America’s recovery”, said White House spokesman Josh Earnest.
“America’s economy is not just better than it was eight years ago”.
Officially, Obama came to this hardscrabble town in northern in to illustrate how steps he took in the first days of his presidency had ultimately paid off and pulled the economy back from the brink. In January 2009 alone, the month that President Obama took office, our economy lost more than 750,000 jobs, and unemployment was on its way to a peak of 10 percent.
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When Obama makes a return trip Wednesday to the community that bills itself as the “RV Capital of the World” he will find it remains heavily dependent on recreational vehicles and is still trying to diversify its economic base.
