Here’s how Clinton can state her case

By Cesar Lumba, Las Vegas

Saturday, May 14, 2016 | 2 a.m.

Hillary Clinton must include the following in her acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention:

“I have been a gutter warrior for the past two highly successful Democratic presidencies — my husband’s and Barack Obama’s. I know what it is like be the president of all Americans: poor people, rich people, blacks, Hispanics and women. Tonight I want to talk to you about the long-suffering men of America. The working-class, mostly white men of America, have been given the shaft by public officials and the top management in many of our largest companies. Factories where they had worked all their lives and from which they had planned to someday retire were padlocked and the manufacturing was shipped to foreign countries, mainly Mexico and China.

“The trade agreements that our country signed were meant to help our manufacturing by expanding our markets overseas. Our industry’s leaders, seeing an opportunity to increase their companies’ profits and to raise stock prices on Wall Street, shipped American jobs instead.

“I promise you, the working class of America, that if fortunate enough to be entrusted with the presidency of the United States, I will sit down with American businessmen and use everything in my power to create incentives for the return of manufacturing to America. And to the foreign manufacturers who are clearly abusing their privilege of selling their products in the American market I will say, ‘If you want to continue selling in America, you must locate some of your factories here, the way foreign auto companies now manufacture many of their cars in America.’

“And if you are a manufacturer who sells most of your products in America and buy nothing from American manufacturers, we will look closely at legal ways to force you to locate factories here.

“I will not do as Mr. Trump suggests, which is to slap a 45 percent tariff on Chinese products. The Chinese are not children who must be punished. What we will do is sit down with them and come to an agreement on how best to go forward, benefiting both American workers and Chinese workers. And while we’re at it, we will do the same with companies that manufacture in Mexico.”