[Lemon:] With a booming economy continuing to create jobs and the unemployment rate at a 50-year low, President Trump says he'll run for reelection next year on the strength of the economy. But will voters in important swing states that he won in 2016 like Michigan give him four more years? CNN's Miguel Marquez takes a look.
[Miguel Marquez, Cnn Correspondent:] Saginaw, Michigan. For several years now the once thriving industrial city growing again. Many Republicans here credit the president.
[Unidentified Male:] I believe that the economy is going to help him take victory again in 2020.
[Marquez:] Early in his 2016 run then candidate Trump campaigned here. It paid off. He carried Saginaw County by a little more than a point after Barack Obama won it by double digits in his two runs. Trump became the first Republican since Ronald Reagan in 1984 to capture Michigan by a margin, a fewer than 11,000 votes. Construction here booming with projects started long before 2016. This is all electrical here. Instrumentation. Jimmy Greene trains apprentices for the construction industry. In 2012 he had 126 trainees. Today, he has over 600. Have you seen new big projects in Saginaw since the 2016 election?
[Jimmy Greene, President & Ceo, Associated Builders And Contractors:] No.
[Marquez:] Greene, a life-long moderate Republican he is no fan of the president, who he says will have a tough time repeating his Saginaw County win in 2020. How big does the economy factor into the 2020 race?
[Greene:] It is the factor. There is absolutely nothing else that President Trump can hold his to hang his hat on.
[Marquez:] Still the unemployment rate here lagging the historically low 3.6 percent national average. In the worst of the recession, Saginaw County saw nearly 14 percent unemployment. Today, it's around 5 percent. How important a place like Saginaw going to be in 2020?
[Steve Gerhardt, Chair, Saginaw County Republican Party:] From perspective, Miguel, this is ground zero.
[Marquez:] He says voters will see through controversies in the Trump administration and base their vote on their pocket book.
[Gerhardt:] It's not so much asked the question are you better off? Make the statement. We are better off because we're together and we're moving this economy forward. With strength.
[Marquez:] Cody Smith, co-founder of Oracle Brewing says at least in the brewing world business could be better.
[Cody Smith, Co-founder, Oracle Brewing:] The last three years, we have went from 20 percent growth to about five percent growth here after a year.
[Marquez:] For now, he and Saginaw holding on and growing, both trying to diversify and looking forward to better days ahead. One thing giving Democrats hope here is that Saginaw County voted for both the Democratic senator and governor in the midterms last year here in the county, but voters from both parties say that the economy will loom large in places like Saginaw that the president will need to win in 2020. Don?
[Lemon:] Miguel Marquez, thank you very much. Let's discuss now. Keith Boykin is here, Joe Lockhart. Let's hear what you guys have to say. Hello. So, is it going to be it's the economy, stupid. Remember that in 2020? Is that what's going to happen?
[Joe Lockhart, Cnn Political Commentator:] If Trump had any discipline, maybe it would be. I don't have any confidence. I don't have any
[Lemon:] Assuming the economy is going to hold up. Go on.
[Lockhart:] Yeah. Listen, I think the Democrats would be silly to say the economy is terrible. I think what they got to focus on is who the economy is working for and who it is not working for. And if you look at in income inequality, it's growing. The tax cut which we pay for on a credit card is by and large working for corporations and investors, not the middle class. So I think, you know, Keith and I go back a long way in the 1990s. We were creating more jobs. We had more growth. We had all levels of incomes rising in all of our socioeconomic groups. And we had a bunch of surplus. We didn't put this all on a credit card for the next generation to pay for. So I think those are the issues that Democrats will have to focus on.
[Lemon:] You mean the 90s after Clinton or just during Clinton?
[Lockhart:] During Clinton.
[Lemon:] Bush was after that and
[Lockhart:] Well, you know, we do have a recent history of Democrats you know, Obama saved the economy. This is a continuation of the Obama economy, of Democrats having to come in and clean up the mess Republicans have made. You know, with trillion dollar deficits, you know, this economy is bubble-like because the deficits will eventually smother it.
[Lemon:] Keith, I want to bring you in. This is a new Gallup poll. It shows that President Trump is at his highest approval rating yet, 46 percent, which is statistically similar to where Obama was. Obama was at 44 percent, 43 percent or 44 percent at the same point in his term. So and we should note that this poll is conducted before. This is last week's clashes between House Democrats and Attorney General William Barr. How good a number is that for this president?
[Keith Boykin, Cnn Political Commentator:] I think it's a discouraging number for this president, for any president, because of the history and the trend line here. Donald Trump has never been above 50 percent in approval rating at any point in the poll averages, and he is the first president in modern history not to do that. Every president comes in with some honeymoon where they have high poll ratings. He has never had that even after he took office. So I think that is discouraging for him. If you also look at the margin of victory he had in 2016 and look at what happened in 2018, I think that spells trouble for him. In 2016, he won Michigan, Wisconsin, Pennsylvania, those three states, by 77,000 votes. Those 46 electoral votes are what decided the election. Now, you look at what happened in 2018 in Michigan, Wisconsin, and Pennsylvania, Democrats won all six races, the Senate races and the gubernatorial races.
[Lemon:] Trump wasn't on the ballot though.
[Boykin:] Yes but Democrats are also doing better in those places where not only Trump is not on the ballot, but Republicans were strong candidates. Scott Walker was
[Lemon:] We're going to talk more about that. I'll have you guys for another segment. Do you think that the strong economic numbers, do you think that's behind his approval rating, approval numbers?
[Boykin:] I don't think the economic numbers really matter for Trump. I think for Trump I don't even know that the numbers have really varied or fluctuated that much. The American people have been pretty much consistent in the low to mid-40s of people who support Trump. It may go up and down from week to week. It may some statistical fluctuation but it's really not significant. The reality is the majority of American people have never supported Donald Trump. They didn't vote for Donald Trump. They have never approved of him.
[Lemon:] So let me ask you because that was Trump's argument before. The economy was good when President Obama was leaving office.
[Lockhart:] That's right.
[Lemon:] When Hillary Clinton
[Lockhart:] That's right.
[Lemon:] He set the table. He built this economy and Trump is continuing this economy. So he was saying, but everyone is not feeling this economy, it's not working for everyone. So can Democrats I've heard a lot of Democrats who are on the campaign trail are saying the same thing. Well, everyone is not feeling it. This isn't everybody's economy. Do you think they can
[Lockhart:] Yeah, and it's not a question of everybody it's a reality that everybody is not feeling it. If you look at the income levels, the vast majority of the tax cut went to the top one percent. The vast majority of the benefits of the economic growth went to the top one percent. So the people who matter, the people in the middle and middle class have continued to get squeezed. They haven't seen big tax cuts. They haven't seen a big improvement or any improvement at all in their life. And Keith is right. Trump's numbers are going to bounce around a little bit. They have averaged in the low 40s. That's with a booming economy
[Lemon:] And sky rocketing deficit.
[Lockhart:] And sky rocketing deficit. The reality is Trump is going to have difficulty winning because he's done nothing in his term to expand upon his base, to reach out to people in the middle who would like to see him go.
[Lemon:] All right. Both of you will stay with me. Democrats are trying to choose which voters they need to count on in 2020. Will it be younger, more liberal voters or the voters they lost to Trump last time around?