In what was billed as a major economic policy speech, Hillary Clinton drew a sharp contrast between her plan and Donald Trump’s — but she colored softly, content to do or say very little that would divert the media’s attention from her opponent.

Clinton’s remarks, delivered from a lectern inside a factory in the suburbs north of Detroit, were a rebuttal to Trump’s speech Monday at the Detroit Economic Club. In fact, the only additions to her standard pitch about job creation were responses to specific proposals Trump rolled out in the same city. But Clinton’s criticisms of the GOP nominee were notable in their cool, clipped delivery — not dripping with animosity or the urgency of a candidate in an actual fight.


It’s a deliberate strategy. As polls show Trump trailing by significant and widening margins in every swing state, the Democratic nominee and her team are eager to keep Clinton’s head down and allow American voters to watch Trump undercut his own economic agenda by spouting incendiary comments, from his muddled suggestion Tuesday that “Second Amendment people” might be able to stop Clinton or a liberal Supreme Court to his insistence over the last 24 hours that she and President Obama are the “founders” of the Islamic State, also known as ISIL or ISIS.

Indeed, amid Trump’s continued self-immolation, Clinton’s aim is to steer clear of the flames by avoiding national headlines. Instead, she’s generating positive local newspaper and television coverage in the swing states where she’s already ahead. On Wednesday, as Trump’s gun comments dominated national news, the Miami Herald front page read: "While in Miami, Clinton asks Congress to act on Zika virus." Last Thursday, following Clinton's visit to a local tie maker, the Denver Post ran a front-page banner headline, "Clinton pledges millions of jobs"; in smaller print, another headline detailed "Damage control in Trump camp."

After Trump’s description of Detroit as a hollowed out economic wasteland on Monday, Clinton painted a far more optimistic picture of an innovative, growing economy. “He talked only of failure, poverty and crime,” she said. “He is missing so much about what makes Michigan great.”

Citing statistics and independent fiscal analyses of Trump’s proposals, she asked voters to consider a question: “Which candidate has a real plan to create good paying jobs?” Her clear emphasis of the word “real” implied that Trump’s economic pitch is a scam of sorts, but she stopped short of explicitly saying so.

She referenced the new aspects of Trump’s tax plan — his revised tax brackets and proposals to make child care expenses tax-exempt and to abolish the estate tax — to argue that the proposals on the whole would help the rich, referring to what she called a “Trump loophole” that would allow the rich to pay a lower rate than many middle-class Americans

“Donald Trump wants to give trillions in tax cuts to people like himself,” she said.

Answering Trump’s hyperbolic rants and accusations with relative subtlety, Clinton dismissed Trump’s proposal to make child care expenses tax-exempt as “his first real ideas” on the subject before explaining why, in her view, it would disproportionately help wealthier families. She made a similar case about his plan to abolish the estate tax, asserting that it would save Trump’s family $4 billion.

“It would do nothing for 99.8 percent of Americans,” Clinton said.

Donald Trump’s gun comments dominated national news cycles this past week. | AP Photo

Despite her increasing lead in the polls, Trump continues to hold a slight edge over Clinton on the question of which candidate voters trust more to handle the economy. And on Trump’s signature economic issue of trade, Clinton is working hard to convince voters that her opposition to the Trans-Pacific Partnership — a key issue with many voters in the rust belt states thought to be fertile soil for a uniquely populist and protectionist candidate — is as genuine as his.

But her nod to his opposition to TPP, delivered with the same casual aplomb used to warn of a recession his economic ideas might bring about, stopped far short of fully embracing his anti-globalist worldview.

“It’s true that too often past trade deals have been sold to the American people with rosy scenarios that didn’t pan out,” Clinton said without specifically referencing the NAFTA agreement signed by her husband in 1993 that Trump consistently blames for an exodus of American manufacturing jobs to Canada and Mexico. “Those promises now ring hollow in many communities across the country.”

She also recognized that China, a constant target of Trump’s ire, “and other countries have gamed the system for too long” and that “enforcement — particularly during the Bush administration — has been too lax.”

But she criticized Trump’s all-or-nothing approach on trade.

“The answer is not to rant and rave — or to cut ourselves off from the world. That would kill even more jobs. The answer is to finally make trade work for us.”

For its part, Trump’s campaign is trying to shift the focus onto Clinton. Ahead of the speech, the campaign blasted out 19 pages of opposition research material on Clinton’s economic record. At the same time, it was urging the media to focus on reports that the Obama Justice Department opted not to pursue an investigation of the Clinton Foundation over potential conflicts of interest during Hillary Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

But Trump himself wasn’t playing along Thursday morning, repeating over and over again that Obama and Clinton were “founders of ISIS” — even in the face of friendly interviewers attempting to throw him a lifeline to explain that he didn’t mean it literally.

“You meant that he created the vacuum, he lost the peace,” conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt suggested to Trump.

“No, I meant he’s the founder of ISIS. I do. He was the most valuable player,” Trump responded. “I give him the most valuable player award. I give her, too, by the way, Hillary Clinton.”

Hewitt, a conservative intellectual who shifted from being a Trump critic to an ardent backer of his candidacy, followed up: “But he’s not sympathetic to them. He hates them. He’s trying to kill them.”

Trump wasn’t having it.

“I don’t care,” he said. “He was the founder. His, the way he got out of Iraq was that that was the founding of ISIS, OK?”

Across cable news Thursday afternoon, commentators continued to focus on Trump’s comments on ISIS, on reports that top Republicans are urging the RNC to shift resources away from Trump to down-ballot candidates and, to some extent, on reports about the overlap between the Clinton Foundation and Hillary Clinton’s State Department.

Coverage of Clinton’s speech barely merited a mention on national newscasts. They’re banking on positive front-page coverage in Michigan newspapers tomorrow.

Gabriel Debenedetti contributed to this report.