Sirotablog
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. David writes about political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties.
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February 14, 2008 3:18 PM
Hillary Clinton Pretends She Never Praised NAFTA
In response to Barack Obama's attack on NAFTA, the Hillary Clinton campaign has gone into meltdown mode. Here's Dow Jones' Marketwatch:
"Clinton's campaign fired back at Obama, charging the Illinois senator with misrepresenting Clinton's position on trade...'Recently [Obama] falsely claimed that Hillary said that NAFTA was a 'boon' to the economy. Now, Obama is resting his argument on a single paraphrase from an article written twelve years ago,' Clinton's campaign said in an emailed statement."
The Huffington Post has followed along with a laugh-out-loud piece in which the chief architects of NAFTA (many who are now wealthy corporate lawyers and lobbyists) are now saying, no, no, Hillary Clinton was really opposed to it. These are the same people, of course, who are looking for jobs in the Hillary Clinton White House.
What a total joke, really. This campaign clearly thinks we are all just a bunch of fools.
Hillary Clinton has made statements unequivocally trumpeting NAFTA as the greatest thing since sliced bread. The Buffalo News reports that back in 1998, Clinton attended the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, and thanked praised corporations for mounting "a very effective business effort in the U.S. on behalf of NAFTA." Yes, you read that right: She traveled to Davos to thank corporate interests for their campaign ramming NAFTA through Congress.
On November 1, 1996, United Press International reported that on a trip to Brownsville, Texas, Clinton "touted the president's support for the North American Free Trade Agreement, saying it would reap widespread benefits in the region."
The Associated Press followed up the next day noting that Hillary Clinton touted the fact that "the president would continue to support economic growth in South Texas through initiatives such as the North American Free Trade Agreement."
In her memoir, Clinton wrote, "Senator Dole was genuinely interested in health care reform but wanted to run for President in 1996. He couldn't hand incumbent Bill Clinton any more legislative victories, particularly after Bill's successes on the budget, the Brady bill and NAFTA."
Yes, we are all expected to just forget that, so that Hillary Clinton's campaign can manufacture supposed "outrage" that anyone would say she supported NAFTA - all at a time her chief strategist, Mark Penn, simultaneously heads a firm that is right now pushing to expand NAFTA into South America.
What a total insult to America's intelligence.
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About David Sirota
David Sirota is a political journalist and nationally syndicated newspaper columnist at Creators Syndicate. He is the New York Times bestselling author of Hostile Takeover. He lives in Denver, Colorado. His daily blog can be found at CREDO Action. He contributes regularly to the Denver Post's Web site, is a senior editor at In These Times magazine and is working on his second book. He has been profiled in Newsweek and the Rocky Mountain News and is widely known for his reporting on political corruption, globalization and working-class economic issues often ignored by both of America's political parties. Sirota serves as co-chair of the Progressive States Network, a 501(c)3 organization that supports state legislators and that is a partner of CREDO.
You can subscribe to Sirota's e-mail newsletter by going to davidsirota.com and signing up in the lefthand corner. To find out more about Sirota, download his official biography or see his recent media appearances. You can e-mail him at sirota@credoaction.com.
The views expressed on this blog are his own, and do not necessarily represent the views of Working Assets (publisher of CREDO Action) or the institutions Sirota works for.
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Discussion
Same folx - same joxe.
Her trade faux will finish her in OH. She can HAVE TX - til we give it back to Mexico.
They both are bad on trade. Obama is sounding like a populist now that John Edwards is no longer there. But he supported Peru Free Trade that more of the same bad deals for South America. And it would have benefited his backers on Wall Street.
Hillary and Barack both need to stand up to their Rubin advisors. Obama has as many of them, if not more than Hillary. We need to keep both their fee to the fire and not let up. Economic populists must be part of the movement first and a campaign second.
The only way we're going to hold Hillary and Obama's feet to the fire is to protest vote for Nadar in LARGE NUMBERS, and I'm talking 10, 20, 50 million.
To only pick on Hillary while Obama is just as bad or worse is just wrong and ignores whats wrong with the Democratic party - that is its embrace of neo-liberal economic policies and abandonment of the working class.
Thats the real insult going on here.
GrantBurkeVT,
That's a great idea. Unfortunately, most of those millions will stick their vote to Mccain or not bother even voting at all even though they know there's nothing for the Democrats to show.
waltc and Feralcat,
The day Obama voted for the Peru FT scam eerily resembles Edwards's vote for China PNTR. Come on David, be a man and don't fall for fake populist rhetoric. It's not as if either one of them actually planned to cancel NAFTA unlike Kucinich and Gravel once in office.
P.S.: Sirota reminds me of Dennis Kucinich endorsing Edwards in 2004 and Obama in 2008 after conceding the IA caucus even before the primaries actually started.
Maxpayne
I don't get Sirota anymore, all he's doing is copying Dailykos and Huffpost and piling on Hillary.
I don't get his hyping of Obama as some sort of populist when he's nothing of the sort. He's probably worse than Hillary. He's the one with 4 corporate assholes for economic advisers. two support unfettered free trade, another privatizing social security, another wants to keep the medical system as it is.
He's stopped excoriating crooked Democrats and trying to expose the rot in the party, hell he even pulled his post on Matt Taibbi's latest piece skewering the Democratic party for betraying the anti-war crowd.
Maybe its just a case of taking marching orders from higher ups in the party and circling wagons around the prospective nominee.
I think Sirota will recover once the "election" is over. By the way, guess who Sirota's favorite candidate Edwards is strongly leaning towards endorsing ?!?
HILLARY !
I'd like to see the look on Sirota's face when he finds this one out ! I wonder if that means Sirota will flip-flop and hype and support Hillary and pull down all those pro-Obama anti-Hillary posts down !
Just to keep up with all his posts, I cannot believe he is trying to revive a SICK PUPPY Democratic Party ! PATHETIC !!!!
Edwards was never a populist once he made it to Washington. Even after he left, his racking in millions from hedge funds once "tort reform" started shifting clients from poor people to wealthy clients shows that Edwards was just another opportunist. You can only win when you are either a known devil or a known populist who can prove that they'll do what they promise. As much as I would like to nail the GOP and Hillary, there's just as much decay lingering in the Democratic Party that needs to be cleaned up first.
Does Sirota support Obama, the same Obama who went out of his way to install a rightwing hack Tammy FUCKworth over a real progressive Cegalus? And as Grant posted in another topic, Donna Edwards defeated Fat Albert Wynn, the K-Street hack.
The problem with this article's argument, is that some of the most fervent NAFTA supporters in the Clinton Administration are now supporting Obama.
On another note this election to me, though there are some differences, is starting to look a lot like the 1972 McGovern nomination. I would not be surprised to see us get crushed in the General Election. I personally don't see the Obama aura extending beyond the base, in fact it is strongest demographically among the most activist of voters and black voters, and trails off badly the further you get away from those demographics. Of course the media seem to love him, in almost a mystical way, but my bet is that will not last. They built him up, then they will tear him down, it is almost like a formula with them, but I guess we will see when the tear him down process begins.
My political hunch is that if the Democrats had been more traditional in their Presidential selection this year, you may have had a generational realignment election, instead I am guessing a bigger defeat than many are suggesting for Democrats.
One thing I will admit though is Obama does have the activists fired up, probably more than any Democratic candidate since McGovern.
Regards,
Obama also has the GOP activists fired up, albeit unintentionally. This is the shocker the Obama-ites refuse to listen to and they will DEEPLY REGRET it once the GOP drops the BOMB:
http://noquarterusa.net/blog/2008/02/16/no-he-cant-because-yes-they-will/
Now is a good time to start concentrating on the legislative races. We need good populist candidates to counter any Republi-lite leanings shown by whichever candidate wins. A president is only as good as his/her Congress.
Look at the Clinton administration and the fiasco of the Republican congress doing everything they possibly could to obstruct the Clinton administration, except bills they needed to block like NAFTA. Then look at the rubber-stamp disaster of the first six years of the Bushiato.
With a good populist majority in Congress to control the president's whims we could go a long way to rebuilding this country in the next 4 years. And Congress would be working the way our Founding Fathers designed it.
Butte
We tried what you suggested in'06 and all we got were a bunch of fake populists and both the Senate and House run by the most corrupt and incompetent Democrats in history - Pelosi and Reid. And who kneecapped all the new faces coming in.
The fact is, if you don't hold your reps accountable and fire them when they fuck up, they'll stick a knife in our collective back as Reid and Pelosi have done. And what I see from you and most other Democrats is just more of the same old shit - refusal to fire reps who betray and fuck with us. Its all about party loyalty with you folks.
Learn to shit can crooked pols instead of voting them back and then you can affect real change.
waltc,
I think butte is trying to tell us that we need a real populist majority. Election after election, we either don't elect populists or are fooled by people who claim "populism" and then put the mask away once in office. We need to first develop a methodology of telling real populists from fake ones and I know that's a steep mountain to climb on that one. Out here in MS, the MS Democratic Party hardly has any credibility because they get into the habit of running yellow dog and then going blue once in office. It's as if the Democratic Party feels that it's ok for the GOP to rape and abuse them ! I do whole-heartedly believe that it is easier to fire newcomers than the long term tenured ones because of the way monied influence builds over time. I would much rather we all vote out the current collection of corruptos in the party and rebuild this party on a populist platform. That will bring fear to the pols and help build and sustain a long term pro-populist party.
spankinrankin and butte,
As waltc pointed out, all of us voters already tried to make the Democratic Party pro-populist in 2006 only to find out that like Al Queda, the Democrats pretended to retreat to populist camp only to sell their souls to K-Street once the elections were over. That's obviously no better than the phoney culture "populist" ReTHUGS stirring up "values" issues and then walking corporate once in office. The only way we're going to get a populist majority is to first get out of these two parties and put in progressive populist Independents not controlled by Big Money in any shape, manner, or form. Second, I do agree that we need to perform major litmus tests to see who's for real vs the impostors.
Even David Sirota needs to STOP paying attention to monied candidates faking "populism" and start paying attention to real progressive populists despite their money shortages. SHAME ON YOU DAVID FOR NOT GIVING NON-MONIED PROGRESSIVES, Democrat or Independent, a chance !!
Let me clear, the Democratic party as its currently constituted is a unreformable. Its leadership is owned lock stock and barrel by monied interests and no longer responds to the American people.
Until the rank and file decide enough is enough and start firing/recalling them the rot will go on and our Democracy will continue its slow death taking the country with it.
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