Tag: tpa

Hillary Clinton hasn’t focus-tested TPP/TPA yet, and good GOD but it shows

I thank the Lord every night that I don’t have to apologize for this campaign.

Because… wow, that’s just bad. I mean, sure, Hillary Clinton boosters would say that it’s a brilliant move on her part – but then, they’d say that if she suddenly decided to defecate in public and then dance a tarantella on her own excrement. Out here in the real world nobody’s walking away all impressed with Secretary Clinton’s acumen.

Another year of this!  Enjoy, mainstream media!  You got what you wished for! …Good, and hard.

Annnnd the trade bill has returned from the dead.

Oh, the arm-twisting that must have happened: “Senate leaders, after personal intercessions by President Obama, reached an agreement Wednesday on a path to grant the president accelerated power to complete a sweeping trade accord ringing the Pacific Ocean — just a day after fellow Democrats had blocked him.” And then there’s this bit:

A long White House meeting with 10 Democrats considered pro trade helped force the Senate to compromise. In the end, the Democrats withdrew their demand that trade enforcement measures be integrated into trade promotion authority before the Senate began considering the measure.

Continue reading Annnnd the trade bill has returned from the dead.

On Senate Democrats’ entertaining defiance against Barack Obama.

Somebody tell me again how brilliant Barack Obama is. No, seriously.  I enjoy a good laugh, now and then.

In a lengthy phone call, Obama pressed his close friend Dick Durbin to help advance his fast-track bill, which would pave the way for the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the largest trade accord in history.

[snip]

In the end, Obama’s schmoozing didn’t persuade Durbin. He opted instead to stick with Reid (D-Nev.), joining all but one Senate Democrat in a stunning rebuke that imperils a centerpiece of Obama’s second-term agenda. The vote does not kill the trade agreement — the Senate could reconsider the bill anytime — but it amounts to an embarrassing setback for the White House at a key time in the delicate, 12-nation TPP talks. Sen. Tom Carper of Delaware was the only Democrat to back the White House.

Continue reading On Senate Democrats’ entertaining defiance against Barack Obama.

Let’s You and Him fight: Elizabeth Warren v. Barack Obama.

(H/T: @exjon) Ooh, this should be entertaining: “The feud between Obama and the left continued Saturday, when Warren and Sen. Sherrod Brown (D-Ohio) called on the president to immediately declassify the negotiating terms of a pending trade deal with a host of nations known as the Trans-Pacific Partnership.” Not least because you have to sit for a moment and think before you can figure out who is being more petty. Is it Barack Obama, for suggesting that Elizabeth Warren is like one of those people who believe in death panels*? Or is it Elizabeth Warren, because she is apparently physically incapable of understanding that Election Night 2014 has noticeably changed the relative relevance of her opinions?

Moving onto Warren’s demand (Sen. Sherrod Brown is, as usual, merely there to be seen): the President will of course ignore her ultimatum, because Barack Obama would like a trade deal and the progressive wing of the Democratic party does not. More to the point, thanks to the aforementioned Election Night the Senate is now run by the political party that officially likes the idea of increased trade. The most likely scenario, then, is one where the GOP largely forces through fast-track legislation with whatever support Barack Obama scrounges up: which means that the Democrats will be the ones having a bruising internal fight for a change.

What’s not to like?

Moe Lane (crosspost)

PS: Democrats hoping beyond hope that a sufficient number of Republicans may be persuaded to vote no on fast-track simply to spite President Obama should note two things. One, the GOP knows that Barack Obama will not be President in 2017. Two, the GOP pretty much despises all progressive politicians on sight.  Particularly all the ones that call us names – and, lo! All the name-callers hate fast-track.

PPS: If Senator Warren does not like the final details of the TPP deal when they become available to her, Senator Warren is perfectly free to vote no. Which she will, of course (I will not assume that she will even bother to read it, first).  If Senator Warren does not like being relegated to this position, then I suppose Senator Warren should have done a better job at helping the Democrats keep their Senate majority.

*Yes. I know, I know: the current system for rationing health care will in fact lead to situations where your health care decisions may in fact be subject to a formal bureaucrat’s veto.  But it’s like ‘swift-boating:’ the fact that it doesn’t register as an insult to us doesn’t mean that it’s not a fairly vicious one to members of the Left. Or that the person being insulted won’t take major offense, either.