Tag Archives: clinton

Many young voters don’t see a difference between Clinton and Trump on climate

by mamieisabelle68 Posted on July 31, 2016

The poll shebang

Many young voters don’t see a difference between Clinton and Trump on climate

By on Jul 31, 2016 9:30 amShare

PHILADELPHIA — One presidential candidate says that scientists who work on climate change are “practically calling it a hoax” and wants to eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency. The other calls climate change “an urgent threat and a defining challenge of our time.” And about four out of 10 millennials in battleground states think there is no difference between their views on the issue.

Tom Steyer’s NextGen Climate group released polling at the Democratic National Convention this past week focused on millennials in 11 battleground states, conducted by Global Strategy Group in June and early July.

According to the poll, 21 percent of millennials are Bernie Sanders supporters who are so disillusioned with Clinton that they wouldn’t plan to vote for her in a general election if there are third-party candidates as well. Young voters are one of the more unpredictable factors in the 2016 election, because they’re more likely than other age groups to support Sanders and less likely to vote in general. Democrats run the risk of losing Sanders holdouts to a third-party candidate. Nearly seven out of 10 Sanders supporters believe there’s no daylight between Trump and Clinton on the issues they care about.

NextGen Climate/Project New America Battleground Millennial Survey

That is alarming news for Clinton. But the numbers could change. NextGen’s findings suggest that if Democrats emphasize climate change and clean energy, they could make progress in winning over this demographic.

Young voters polled, including pro-Sanders voters, rank clean air and water and switching to renewable energy as high priorities. Three-quarters are more likely to support a candidate who wants to transition the U.S. away from fossil fuels. On the flip side, Trump’s position on the EPA could hurt him. Millennials like the EPA, the polling found — about as much as they like Beyoncé.

NextGen Climate/Project New America Battleground Millennial Survey

But this may not help Clinton much because young voters don’t recognize how different she is from Trump. Forty-four percent say there’s no distinction between the two candidates on transitioning away from fossil fuels, and 43 percent say there’s no distinction on protecting air and water.

Maybe that’s in part because Sanders hammered Clinton over her positions on fracking and fossil fuel extraction during the primaries.“ On the ground, students just don’t know the difference between the candidates,” Heather Hargreaves, NextGen’s vice president, said at a briefing on the poll.

“It’s not just ignorance,” added Andrew Baumann of Global Strategy Group. “They assume she’s more conservative than she is.” He continued, “I think part of the goal is to educate” voters and reintroduce Clinton.

But if her convention speech was any indication, Clinton isn’t interested in focusing much more on this issue, beyond the usual applause lines. She mentioned in passing how clean energy will lead to job creation, but she didn’t dwell on it. She left the task of drawing a contrast between her climate policies and Trump’s to speakers like California Gov. Jerry Brown and League of Conservation Voters President Gene Karpinski.

Even if Clinton isn’t going to be heavily focused on climate, Steyer and his group plan to press the issue on her behalf. NextGen is putting $25 million into efforts to turn out young voters who are concerned about climate change, including at more than 200 college campuses. The group’s hope is that young voters will understand that the stakes are so high for climate change that they will vote for Clinton even if they don’t love her.

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Many young voters don’t see a difference between Clinton and Trump on climate

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Clinton Emphasizes Racial Justice, But Some Black Activists Are Unconvinced

by IeshaQirvridew Posted on July 29, 2016

Mother Jones

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As she accepted the Democratic nomination on Thursday night, Hillary Clinton asked her audience to “put ourselves in the shoes of young black and Latino men and women who face the effects of systemic racism and are made to feel like their lives are disposable.” Coming one week after the harsh “law and order” tone struck by her opponent, Clinton’s statement was a powerful acknowledgement by a presidential candidate of the unfairness of the justice system for some minorities.

For the racial justice activists outside the Wells Fargo Arena, the feeling was different. On Tuesday, as the Black DNC Resistance March worked its way through Philadelphia, protesters chanted, “Stop killing black people,” and carried signs that said, “Hillary, Delete Yourself” and “Hillary, you’re not welcome here.” Hawk Newsome, an activist participating in the march, told USA Today, “Hillary Clinton has had a perfect opportunity in the last two or three weeks to say, ‘Hey, black lives matter to me, and here is my platform.’ She’s done nothing more than make some vague statements and tweets.”

Clinton’s racial justice platform has been a source of frustration for Black Lives Matter activists. During the Democratic primary, protesters called for the candidate to explain how she would help black communities. Clinton responded that activists needed to clearly define what they were asking for. “I believe you change laws, you change allocation of resources, you change the way systems operate,” she told a group of Black Lives Matter activists during a meeting last August. In October, Clinton met with activists from Campaign Zero, which had created a list of proposals for police reform, and she said her platform would take their concerns into account. The resulting platform did include some items on the activists’ wish list, such as the creation of a national standard for officers’ use of force and support for alternatives to incarceration, but it did not endorse Campaign Zero’s request to empower communities to hold officers accountable.

“One of the things Hillary said to us is she talked about the importance of communities being involved,” DeRay McKesson, a prominent activist and one of the Campaign Zero members at the meeting with Clinton, told BuzzFeed. “And we said, ‘Well, we don’t see that in your platform.’ Where are you giving communities any oversight or any authority?”

McKesson joined other leading figures in the Black Lives Matter movement in Philadelphia for the Democratic National Convention, but the activists have resisted openly supporting the party’s nominee. In June, Black Lives Matter co-founder Alicia Garza told Elle magazine that although she would probably cast her vote for Clinton in November, she would “absolutely not” endorse her publicly, citing the former first lady’s public support of the 1994 crime bill and the tough-on-crime policies it instituted.

Garza’s lack of enthusiasm for Clinton is not uncommon among younger black voters. When Clinton campaigned during the South Carolina primary, she relied heavily on the Mothers of the Movement, a group of black mothers who have lost their children to gun and police violence, in an effort to shore up her support in black communities. But Erica Garner, the daughter of Eric Garner, who died at the hands of New York police in July 2014, became a prominent surrogate for the Bernie Sanders campaign. Other activists, including Garza, said they had voted for Sanders during the Democratic primary. During the convention week, Sanders supporters and racial justice activists collaborated on protests. “She’s not performing where Obama was in 2012 with African American voters primarily because of younger blacks,” one pollster told BuzzFeed. “There is no progressive majority without this key component of the Obama coalition.”

Clinton has struggled to win over black activists, but she has also faced criticism when she embraces their message. When the list of speakers for the Democratic National Convention was first announced, police unions complained that widows of officers killed in recent police shootings in Dallas and Baton Rouge, Louisiana, had been left off the program, arguing that they should have been included alongside mothers of black victims of police and gun violence. On Thursday, family members of slain police officers addressed the convention, in a segment that had not been listed on the convention schedule until the day of their appearance.

As the campaign has progressed, Clinton has increasingly invoked the message of Black Lives Matter, most notably in her acceptance speech on Thursday. So far, however, her words of support haven’t been enough to win over many of the movement’s activists.

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Clinton Emphasizes Racial Justice, But Some Black Activists Are Unconvinced

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Hate crappy trade deals? This free concert is for you.

by LeighW51ubkply Posted on July 28, 2016

deal with it

Hate crappy trade deals? This free concert is for you.

By on Jul 28, 2016Share

A group of musicians are on tour protesting against the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP), a murky global trade deal that could strike a blow to human rights, labor, and the environment.

Rock Against the TPP will bring Talib Kweli, Tom Morello, cofounder of Rage Against the Machine, Anti-Flag, and many more to a venue near you. Even better, the tickets are free. The tour kicked off in Denver, and is headed to San Diego this Saturday. More stops are planned in Seattle and Portland in August.

Despite stiff opposition, Obama has pushed to fast-track TPP through Congress; some protestors heckled Obama against the trade agreement during his primetime speech at the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday. Hillary Clinton, meanwhile, has been wishy-washy about the whole thing.

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Hate crappy trade deals? This free concert is for you.

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Watch history being made live at the DNC

by LeannaStaley Posted on July 26, 2016

Watch history being made live at the DNC | Grist

they’re with her

Watch history being made live at the DNC

By on Jul 26, 2016Share

Delegates are casting their votes, and Hillary Clinton is about to become the first female presidential nominee for a major political party. Watch below:

Intrepid Grist reporters Rebecca Leber and Ben Adler are in Philly covering the convention. Follow them on Twitter to stay on top of the environmental and climate news coming out of the DNC.

For our comprehensive election coverage, visit our Election Guide.

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Watch history being made live at the DNC

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Don’t Expect Bill Clinton to Follow the Script Tonight

by RobbinNunes3 Posted on July 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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Former President Bill Clinton will address the Democratic National Convention on Tuesday night, and if history is any indication, expect him to go off script. Like, a lot. Four years ago, the aspiring First Man ad-libbed much of his speech endorsing President Barack Obama, forcing the teleprompter to freeze for minutes at a time as he skillfully walked the audience through Obama’s economic agenda. Clinton’s real-time edits, viewed alongside the original text, displayed a keen editorial sense of what works and what doesn’t.

But Clinton is also a hands-on editor when it comes to drafting his remarks too. Old presidential records at the Clinton Library offer a behind-the-scenes look at how Clinton (and his speechwriters) composed major addresses during his administration, scribbling in the margins in ballpoint pen and often rewriting long passages by hand. Incidentally, one of the best examples in the collection is a convention speech—from the 1996 convention in Chicago. That’s the one Clinton delivered the famous line, “I still believe in a place called America.”

You can read his full markup starting below:

dc.embed.loadNote(‘//www.documentcloud.org/documents/2998898-Clinton96speech/annotations/310273.js’);

View note

The meat of the speech, full of policy details—including a defense of his welfare reform law—received a lighter editing touch. But Clinton zeroed in on the opening, offering a blizzard of tweaks:

dc.embed.loadNote(‘//www.documentcloud.org/documents/2998898-Clinton96speech/annotations/310279.js’);

View note

And continued with a series of re-writes on the second page:

dc.embed.loadNote(‘//www.documentcloud.org/documents/2998898-Clinton96speech/annotations/310280.js’);

View note

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Don’t Expect Bill Clinton to Follow the Script Tonight

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Bernie Delegates Ease Up on Protest Plans

by IvaGabbard Posted on July 26, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday afternoon, Bernie Sanders sent a message to his delegates requesting that they not disrupt the convention by mounting protests inside the Wells Fargo Center. He followed up that evening, on the opening night of the Democratic National Convention, with a forceful speech declaring that to advance the progressive revolution he has championed, his supporters should work fervently to elect Hillary Clinton. Now the Sanders delegates who came to Philadelphia disappointed, angry, and looking to express their dissatisfaction with Clinton, the Democratic Party, and the whole damn political process are grappling with what to do.

On Monday, some Sanders delegates appeared to be looking for a fight. Organizers of the Bernie Delegates Network—an outfit independent of the Sanders campaign—talked of convention floor protests or walkouts and even the possibility of nominating a vice presidential candidate to challenge Tim Kaine, whom some Sanders supporters view as too centrist. Sanders delegates at breakfast meetings jeered Clinton. And when Sanders addressed his delegates that afternoon and urged them to support Clinton against Trump, he was met with a wall of loud boos and seemed unnerved by the fierce reaction.

But by Tuesday morning, there was a shift. Clinton delegates reported that the anti-Clinton mood of many Sanders delegates had seemed to soften. Mitch Cesar, a Democratic Party official in Florida and a Clinton delegate, recalled, “I watched the Bernie people’s reaction very carefully as the evening went on, with Michelle Obama, Elizabeth Warren, and Bernie speeches. There was a slow warming. I saw the Bernie delegates becoming more energized and enthusiastic in reacting to Clinton. It was incremental but continuous. It’s a process. And we’re just looking for progress.” And though some Sanders delegates had booed references to Clinton at the start of the day’s proceedings, the booing did diminish over the course of the first night.

At a Tuesday morning briefing held by the Bernie Delegates Network, no one was discussing protests or walkouts. Norman Solomon, the co-chair of the group, told reporters that an effort to challenge Kaine had failed after a Sanders supporter went to a Democratic National Committee office in search of the forms needed to file such a challenge and was not provided with the necessary paperwork. He claimed the DNC had thwarted this move in an unfair manner. Solomon said the anti-Kaine Sanders delegates had recruited a known “genuine progressive” to run against Kaine in what he acknowledged would be a symbolic endeavor. But Solomon refused to identify this progressive. Reporters protested that he was not being transparent. But Solomon insisted that the progressive who had offered to take on Kaine had agreed to do so on the condition that he or she would remain anonymous until it was clear this challenge could actually occur.

The press conference grew a bit heated, as incredulous reporters pressed Solomon for the name and he insisted the issue was “moot” due to the supposed DNC shenanigans. At one point, a reporter requested that Solomon text the person and ask if he could disclose his or her name. Solomon and his fellow Sanders delegates at the event did not identify any other organized actions that Sanders delegates might conduct to express their discontent with Kaine, Clinton, or the Democratic Party. But one delegate from New Mexico, Teva Gabis-Levine, who is a whip for his state’s Sanders delegation, noted that on Monday when he received instructions from the Sanders campaign to tamp down the booing, he did not pass that guidance to his delegation. He said he wanted Sanders delegates to “speak their mind as they see fit.”

At the event, Donna Smith, executive director of Progressive Democrats of America and a Sanders supporter, said she couldn’t stop crying during Sanders’ convention speech: “There’s a great deal of heartbreak surrounding listening to Bernie Sanders…A feeling of a moment history passed.” She asserted that there remained a need to allow Sanders delegates to “have a voice.” Though Sanders and pro-Sanders speakers at the convention noted that they had achieved concessions from the Clinton campaign in drafting a progressive platform and implementing a rules change lessening the influence of superdelegates, Solomon contended that the Clinton camp and the DNC has not done enough to achieve party unity: “The onus rests in the hands of Hillary Clinton and the DNC.” But he did not present options for the Sanders delegates.

Smith and Solomon did note that Sanders was right regarding the threat posed by Trump. “It’s essential to defeat Donald Trump,” Solomon said. But it appeared that he and Smith—and perhaps other Sanders backers—are having a tough time resolving what may be conflicting impulses: how to continue the Sanders’s anti-establishment revolution while supporting the establishment candidate who can keep Trump out of the White House. As Solomon said of Sanders, “he’s making the best of the box he’s in.”

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Bernie Delegates Ease Up on Protest Plans

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Bernie Feels the Bern of His Anti-Clinton Delegates

by CyrilKNFxe Posted on July 25, 2016

Mother Jones

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On Monday afternoon in a cavernous ballroom at the Philadelphia Convention Center, Bernie Sanders delivered a rousing speech to the nearly 1,900 delegates backing his late presidential bid. He hit all the thematic high points of his campaign: end big-money politics, restore the middle class, stop trade agreements, continue the revolution. And his supporters cheered wildly for their man. But when Sanders told them that they must now band together to defeat the “bigotry” of Donald Trump by electing Hillary Clinton, he was drowned out by a chorus of boos and anti-Clinton chants. Just hours before the official opening of the convention, Bernie Nation was not willing to follow Sanders’ lead on this key point.

Sanders spoke after speeches by some of his biggest backers, including rapper Killer Mike, former NAACP President Ben Jealous, and actress Rosario Dawson. When Dawson mentioned Clinton, the room broke into loud boos. Dawson told the crowd that Clinton “is not a leader, she is a follower.”

When he spoke, the senator from Vermont made the case that his presidential campaign had been a historic success and that it would continue to be a vehicle for political revolution. Volunteers handed out registration forms for Sanders supporters to hold organizing meetups in late August, to kick off a new step in this progressive crusade. Sanders received big cheers when he praised his supporters’ contributions to what he called “by far the most progressive platform ever written” and an ovation when he noted the departure of Democratic National Committee chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz, which he suggested might open up an opportunity for a more Bernie-friendly leadership in the party.

But when he tried to rally the delegates on behalf of Clinton, his audience became restless. “Immediately, right now, we have got to defeat Donald Trump, and we have got to elect Hillary Clinton and Tim Kaine,” Sanders said. His delegates shouted their protests and booed, forcing Sanders to pause before continuing in his remarks. Sanders called Trump a “bully and a demagogue” who “has made bigotry the core of his campaign.” Still, the boos continued. “She does too!” delegates shouted. Others yelled, “Only you! Only you!”

Sanders declared that Trump poses a danger to the country’s future, but he could not win over the crowd. “She has ruined communities!” one woman shouted. “She has ruined countries!” Sanders pointed out that Trump “does not respect the Constitution of the United States.” Delegates kept on chanting: “Not with her!” and “We want Bernie!”

Sanders did not confront the booing delegates directly. He did not use this opportunity to address their anger and disappointment. He looked a bit surprised by the intensity of the Clinton opposition. He moved ahead with his prepared speech. After he was done—and the crowd had chanted, “Thank you, Bernie!”—Mother Jones asked Sanders three times what he thought about his delegates fiercely booing Clinton. He did not respond and quickly left the ballroom.

Afterward, Sanders delegates and supporters discussed the widespread booing of Clinton and whether they could follow Sanders’ guidance. Several said they could not bring themselves to vote for her. “She’s no better than Trump,” said one delegate, who wouldn’t provide her name.

Angela Valdes, a 37-year-old small-business owner from Portland, Oregon, who is a Sanders representative on the convention’s credentials committee, said she was nowhere close to supporting Clinton. “It is all about honesty and integrity,” Valdes said. “She has to come clean first.” Come clean on what issues? “Oh,” she remarked, “there are too many to list.” But Valdes left open the possibility that Sanders might be able to persuade her to vote for Clinton by November.

Other delegates acknowledged that Sanders was right that Clinton must win at the end of the day but said that protests against her this week in Philadelphia were worthwhile. Such actions, Elizabeth Davis, a North Carolina delegate, said, would “keep it fresh” for Clinton that she needs Sanders’ supporters to win.

So how much will Sanders do to persuade his delegates to follow his advice? In this appearance, he didn’t go beyond his prepared remarks. And Aisha Dew, a whip for the North Carolina Sanders delegation, said she has not heard anything from the Sanders campaign regarding the actions delegates should take. Earlier in the day, at a Florida delegation breakfast, Sanders offered no instructions on how delegates might conduct themselves on the floor of the convention this week.

After Sanders departed the convention center, his campaign manager Jeff Weaver remained as delegates milled about and wondered what would be next for them at the convention. What about the booing of Clinton? he was asked. “Oh,” he said, with a tone of nonchalance, “people will come around.”

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Bernie Feels the Bern of His Anti-Clinton Delegates

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Clinton Announces Tim Kaine as Her Running Mate

by SharylDellinger Posted on July 23, 2016

Mother Jones

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Hillary Clinton announced Sen. Tim Kaine of Virginia as her running mate on Friday, making what’s widely seen as a safe pick by choosing a man with deep political experience, but one who might not have much potential to generate new excitement for her campaign. She announced the decision in a text message to supporters, informing them, “I’m thrilled to tell you this first: I’ve chosen Sen. Tim Kaine as my running mate.”

Read about Tim Kaine’s past as a civil rights attorney.

Kaine backed Barack Obama in the 2008 Democratic primary but was an early booster of Clinton’s 2016 bid and has long been seen as a front-runner to be Clinton’s vice presidential pick. While he doesn’t have a loyal following among the Bernie Sanders crowd, as someone like Elizabeth Warren does, it’s easy to see why Kaine appealed to Clinton. He has an extensive political résumé, as a former mayor of Richmond, lieutenant governor and governor of Virginia, and head of the the Democratic National Committee, and now as a senator from an important swing state.

Kaine isn’t a rhetorical bomb-thrower. He still carries the reserved Midwestern persona that he gained growing up in the Kansas City suburbs. A former civil rights attorney who won a major redlining verdict against Nationwide Insurance before he launched his political career, Kaine, much like Clinton, offers a quieter version of progressivism than Sanders or Warren, with an emphasis on finding compromise and achieving incremental progress. During his first few years in the Senate, Kaine has focused on foreign policy, seeking to impose limits on the president’s powers to conduct war.

Kaine’s challenge will be to convince Sanders fans that he’s on their side, and he didn’t do himself any favors in the lead-up to his vice presidential rollout. Earlier this week, he signed onto a pair of letters, bipartisan but largely authored by Republicans, that asked federal regulators to ease regulations on community banks.

Read more about Kaine’s full career here.

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Clinton Announces Tim Kaine as Her Running Mate

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This 19-Year-Old Never-Trumper Is the Future of the GOP—If It Can Keep Him

by DaciaFabro49 Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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On the final night of the GOP convention in Cleveland, I found myself next to the largely white, largely over-50 crowd of delegates from West Virginia on the red carpet of Quicken Loans Arena. Throughout Donald Trump’s 75-minute acceptance speech, they shouted in unison: “Build that wall,” “Help is on the way,” and “Lock her up!”

Trump fans were enraptured by his dystopian vision of a nation in “chaos,” beset by enemies from without and from within. “This is the legacy of Hillary Clinton: death, destruction, terrorism, and weakness,” he said. Shoulder-to-shoulder with delegates on the floor, I was left with zero doubt Trump was expertly hitting his mark: The mood was electric and full of rage.

But the most interesting experience of my week in Cleveland was an interview I did with a young member of the Texas delegation—someone who might have been placed, had things gone differently, to inherit a more diverse and forward-looking version of the Republican Party than the one seen by the nation on Thursday night. He’s now an outlier.

Houston-native Jorge Villarreal is transferring to Texas A&M from community college next year to study agriculture economics and pursue a career in political consulting. The 19-year-old Mexican American is a Republican, and he’s passionate about his politics. But he despairs about the future of his party, and the Trumpism—protectionism, nativism, racism—now cemented at the top of the ticket.

In its 2013 election “autopsy” report, the Republican National Committee wrote that in order to win future elections, the party should urgently change how it engaged with Latinos if it hoped “to welcome in new members of our party”:

If we believe our policies are the best ones to improve the lives of the American people, all the American people, our candidates and office holders need to do a better job talking in normal, people-oriented terms and we need to go to communities where Republicans do not normally go to listen and make our case. We need to campaign among Hispanic, black, Asian and gay Americans and demonstrate that we care about them, too.

But this post-Romney push by the party to appeal to a broader demographic of voters—rather than simply to white Americans—appears to have run aground in Trump’s GOP. Polling indicates a majority of young Republicans have an unfavorable opinion of the billionaire real estate developer. Among the broader Hispanic community, Trump has an unfavorability rating of 77 percent, according to a Gallup poll conducted in March.

I originally included portions of my video interview with Villarreal in my story about how voters reacted to Sen. Ted Cruz’s refusal to endorse Trump. But I wanted to share the full interview, because it provides such a powerful counterpoint to what I saw in the convention hall on Thursday—and a possible future for the Republican Party.

“Trump’s racist comments makes me feel that I can’t vote for him at all, because not only would I be making a bad decision morally for me, I would be further damaging the party in the long term,” Villarreal told me. He recounted conversations with his parents, who he said had immigrated to the United States illegally before being granted amnesty during Ronald Reagan’s presidency: “They say, ‘Jorge, you need to fix your party. Trump’s making it go haywire.'”

Watch the full interview above.

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This 19-Year-Old Never-Trumper Is the Future of the GOP—If It Can Keep Him

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

by NannetteUnj Posted on July 22, 2016

Mother Jones

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This story was originally published by Grist and is reproduced here as part of the Climate Desk collaboration.

Donald Trump’s big speech at the Republican convention on Thursday didn’t contain a single reference to the environment or climate change. It was vague on policy overall, focusing heavily on the primary themes of this year’s Republican National Convention: bashing Hillary Clinton’s character and fear-mongering over crime and national security, with a heavy dose of Islamophobia and xenophobia.

There was, however, one section that dealt hazily with energy policy. Unfortunately, it was filled with falsehoods. Let’s go through the four key assertions one at a time:

“Excessive regulation is costing our country as much as $2 trillion a year, and we will end it.”

The apparent source for this figure is the National Association of Manufacturers, a conservative business lobbying organization that is fiercely opposed to regulations. The group’s $2 trillion estimate calculates only the cost of regulatory compliance and not the cost savings that result from government rules. So the fact that environmental and workplace safety regulations prevent health-care expenses and missed work days, for example, is simply ignored in this calculation. When you do account for the benefits of regulations, they often end up saving far more money than they cost. Experts debunked NAM’s report; the nonpartisan Congressional Research Service cited the Office of Management and Budget in calling the kind of methodology used “inherently flawed.” No unbiased, empirical cost-benefit analysis would come up with anything close to the number Trump cites.

“We are going to lift the restrictions on the production of American energy. This will produce more than $20 trillion in job-creating economic activity over the next four decades.”

The source for this $20 trillion figure is the Institute for Energy Research, an organization funded by the Koch brothers. As The New York Times has previously noted, “economic reality” contradicts this projection. Additional fossil fuel production has diminishing returns because increased supply means lower prices. So, according to experts the Times interviewed, the number is wildly exaggerated.

“My opponent, on the other hand, wants to put the great miners and steelworkers of our country out of work—that will never happen when I am president.”

Hillary Clinton’s admission that coal workers will be put out of work in the years ahead was not a statement of what she wants; it was a statement of reality. The coal industry is shedding jobs because of mechanization, tapped-out mountains, and increasing competition from natural gas and renewables. President Obama’s Clean Power Plan would prevent backsliding toward more coal use but not seriously worsen the industry’s already grim prospects. So Trump can’t actually reverse coal’s decline just by rolling back regulations. In any case, Clinton, unlike Trump, has a plan to put laid-off workers from this dying industry back to work in growing sectors—including, but not limited to, wind and solar energy production.

“With these new economic policies, trillions of dollars will start flowing into our country. This new wealth will improve the quality of life for all Americans—we will build the roads, highways, bridges, tunnels, airports, and the railways of tomorrow. This, in turn, will create millions more jobs.”

Trump is right that infrastructure investment would be good for the economy. Too bad his party’s own platform explicitly rejects spending on railways and many other kinds of infrastructure. And, in reality, Trump’s insane budget plan would leave no money for such projects.

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4 Things That Trump Got Wrong

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