Jobs are down, prices are up and Trump is in trouble

The new jobs reports from the Bureau of Labor Statistics paint an astonishingly bleak picture of the Trump economy. The nation created few jobs in August, and BLS added to the grim portrait by taking off the board almost a million jobs that had supposedly been created over the last year.

The specter of mass unemployment is just the latest in a long series of indicators that President Trump’s economy is cruising to a bruising.

Candidate Trump promised to bring prices down on day one, but anyone who has shopped at a grocery store recently realizes he has failed to honor his pledge. Prices in July were up by 2.7 percent over the year prior, and employers predict a big increase in the cost of health insurance. 

Jobs are down, prices are up and Trump is in trouble. Millions of Americans will fall through the economic safety net that Republicans shredded with the passage of Trump’s big bad budget bill earlier this year that decimated Medicaid. This is the perfect blueprint for widespread humanitarian suffering. 

The floundering economy is a bright red warning flag for MAGA and should be a call for aggressive action by Democrats on the issue as we head into next year’s midterm elections. 

A new national survey of registered voters for The Economist by YouGov.com illustrates the political danger for Trump and for congressional Republicans running for their lives in the midterms. Inflation was the problem that the most voters worried about and Republicans were even more concerned about the high cost of living than Democrats.

Less than 40 percent of voters approved of Trump’s handling of high prices. Democrats should focus on inflation as much as the public does, because it is the best way of cutting into the president’s blue-collar base. In contrast, there are as many voters who approve of his draconian immigration policies as there are who disapprove.  

Inflation is Trump’s Achilles heel, and Democrats should use it against him. Inflation undid Joe Biden’s presidency and it could do the same to Trump’s. The 2024 Election Day exit poll indicated that three in every four voters considered inflation a hardship and a clear majority of those voters supported Trump over Kamala Harris.

The electorate took him at his word and he has failed them abysmally. How can you trust a president to keep any of his pledges on any issue when his path to the White House was paved with lies and broken promises? 

There is pretty blue bow that ties up the strong Democratic message on inflation. Effective messages incorporate personal and issue elements. Trump broke his promise to voters that he would reduce prices. We’re eight months into his second presidency and prices are still going up while the supply of jobs is going down. His stiff taxes on imports and his deportation of immigrant farm and construction workers have placed a severe burden on hard working and financially hard-pressed American families. 

I’m not an economist, but I have spent lots of time living in Holiday Inn Express hotels while I’ve been on the road over the years advising Democratic and progressive clients. My advice to the Trump resistance is to focus like a laser beam on the high cost of living.

Now that Trump must distract voters from his floundering economy and his possible role in the Jeffrey Epstein sex saga, expect more bellicose rhetoric, racist attacks on immigrants and reckless military misadventure at home and abroad from his administration.  

There are many good reasons to hate Trump. The challenge for Democrats is to keep their eye on the prize and focus public attention on Trump’s failure to keep his personal promise to reduce the cost of living for hard working American consumers. 

Brad Bannon is a national Democratic strategist and CEO of Bannon Communications Research which polls for Democrats, labor unions and progressive issue groups. He hosts the popular progressive podcast on power, politics and policy, Deadline D.C. with Brad Bannon.