It's simple : Patriotic Americans who want the US to be strong should vote for Democrats - who build the economy - rather than for Republicans - who tear the economy down.
Bonddad has done a great job of savaging the GOP's preposterous claims as the party of fiscal responsibility, and I thought I should add this ammunition :
In 2002, Slate did a nice mini study, written up by Carol Vinzant and published Oct. 4, 2002, which presented compelling evidence :
The stock market prefers Democratic presidents to Republicans.
The Slate study demonstrated that through the entire 20th Century the US economy grew much faster under Democrat presidents than under Republican presidents.
Ha.
Combine this with Bonddad's take on how the GOP has become the party of reckless goverment debt spending, and you have a powerful weapon with which to
Smash the GOP's claims as the party of economic growth : The GOP is actually the party of government deficits and economic stagnation
OK folks, you now have the tools, the arguments, the data:
Now, SMASH the GOP's economic claims : the GOP is not the party of economic growth, the GOP is the party of government debt spending, fiscal irresponsibility, and economic stagnation.
[ from Carol Vinzant's Slate piece ] "Poll after poll shows that when Americans divide up the chores of running the country, they tend to think of the economy and stock market as Republican domain and delegate softer issues, like the environment, to Democrats.
But Democrats, it turns out, are much better for the stock market than Republicans. Slate ran the numbers and found that since 1900, Democratic presidents have produced a 12.3 percent annual total return on the S&P 500, but Republicans only an 8 percent return. In 2000, the Stock Trader's Almanac, which slices and dices Wall Street performance figures like baseball stats, came up with nearly the same numbers (13.4 percent versus 8.1 percent) by measuring Dow price appreciation. (Most of the 20th century's bear markets, incidentally, have been Republican bear markets: the Crash of '29, the early '70s oil shock, the '87 correction, and the current stall occurred under GOP presidents.)....
Nor does having a Republican Congress help the market. A Democratic Senate showed returns of 10.5 percent (versus 9.4 percent for a GOP upper chamber), and a Democratic House returned 10.9 percent versus 8.1 percent for the Republicans..... real GDP growth follows the same pattern. Since 1930 (the first year decent data is available), GDP growth was 5.4 percent for Democratic presidents and 1.6 percent for Republicans."