Trump faces a swing state voter revolt because he failed on jobs: former adviser Gary Cohn

In a deep dive into Donald Trump's three-year record of economic policies -- and how they may impact the 2020 re-election if he is still on the ballot -- one of his former economic advisers admits that his failure to make a dent in unemployment in the midwest may come back to bite him at the polls.

According to Politico's report, "President Donald Trump launches into the fourth year of his presidency this week with some strong economic numbers to support his case for reelection: Unemployment is low, job growth remains solid, wages are rising and the stock market is soaring.

But the Trump economy features a soft underbelly that Democrats are preparing to exploit and — depending how the numbers tilt this year — could wind up undermining the president’s best argument for four more years."

Under normal circumstances, economic numbers such as those the Trump administration is experiencing would be good news in normal times, but Donald Trump made a job pitch to midwestern voters in order to secure their votes and his follow-through has been mixed at best.

According to Gary Cohn, who served as Trump's first National Economic Council director, voters who are promised better economic times have long memories.

“He stood there in Pennsylvania and talked about bringing steel mills back and what’s happened is we’ve cut steel lines,” Cohn told Politico. “We gave companies a big tax cut then took it away with tariffs. These are the pieces that are missing. I think he could have had it all. And he doesn’t have it all.”

The report notes trouble for Trump in three key states that president would need to stay in the Oval Office if he survives impeachment.

"While the national jobs numbers look strong, that’s not entirely the case in some key swing states such as Pennsylvania where the unemployment rate is ticking up and hit 4.3 percent in November. Among the drivers: plant closings and threatened layoffs like those made by Allegheny Technologies, which said it could lay off at least 100 workers due to tariffs on imported steel used in making final products.

Unemployment in Michigan is also higher than the national average, at 4.0 percent. Swing-state Wisconsin is in better shape at just 3.3 percent. Ohio may only barely be a swing state anymore but it also boasts a jobless rate of 4.2 percent that has been rising for the last few months," Politico reports. "Ohio was also on track for a net job loss in 2019, the first time since the Great Recession, according to the Columbus Dispatch, which also called into question Trump’s claims of bringing automotive jobs to the state."

According to Cohn, all of this is bad news if the Democrats tailor their message to workers in the states.

“The question is whether Joe Biden or somebody can go in there and come up with something different and something better,“ he admitted, “And frankly they’d start with most of the women and minorities in the world hating Trump and they’d have to add to that.”

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