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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 12, 2008 8:02 PM
Obama Putting Attack On NAFTA Front and Center?
From Barack Obama's victory speech tonight:
"It's a game where trade deals, like NAFTA, ship jobs overseas and force parents to compete with their teenagers to work for minimum wages at the local fast-food joint or at Wal-Mart. It's what happens when the American worker doesn't have a voice at the negotiating table, when leaders change their positions on trade with the politics of the moment, and that is why we need a president who will listen not just to Wall Street, but to Main Street, a president who will stand with workers not just when it's easy, but when it's hard, and that's the kind of president I intend to be when I'm president of the United States of America."
I've been troubled by some of Obama's votes on trade, and I've made no bones about that. But this rhetoric is encouraging.
As I have written, it's good politics for Obama to put our lobbyist-written trade policy on trial in states like Wisconsin, Ohio, Texas and Pennsylvania. But that' s not why I am encouraged. I am encouraged because it is good for the country for a major candidate to put this issue at the center of the debate in the stretch run of the nominating process.
Since Edwards left the race, we haven't had anyone really focusing on this issue on the Democratic side. But it looks like that may be changing. And whoever you are for in this race, if you are a progressive, you will agree that's a good thing, indeed. With polls showing Americans are desperate for a departure from our current trade policy, getting this issue into the debate is an important step.
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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.
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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
Is it just me or is all this "rhetoric" a total mismatch? I mean, it's one thing to talk about it but it's another to actually follow it. Back in 1992, Bill Clinton made a lot of "rhetoric" on NAFTA even promising to modify it so that it doesn't have to be a lose-lose deal but once he got elected, he simply caved in and worked hard with Newt Gingrich to arm-twist an member of Congress who could be pushed into voting for it. Now please tell me how I am supposed to know that Obama will REALLY clamp down on NAFTA ? As pointed out by other users in an earlier post and even yourself in this post, with Edwards, Kucinich, Gravel to some degree, and soon to be dropping out Paul and Huckabee, Obama isn't really going to feel that he owes the public anything once the nomination is over, assuming he can keep his victory. He has done nothing in the Senate to stop the Peru FT scam and he has yet to prove that he really will clamp down on those scams.
To answer your question....
You have no way of knowing if Obama means what he says. He's said a lot of stuff....much of it NOT in this new Edwardian vein.
Could it be that he's trying to attack The Hill where she's showing a lot of strength? Could this just be politics as usual?
We won't know til President Obama nominates Joe Lieberman for SCOTUS....or not; unless...
We put the pressure on him to commit to this. I don't trust him but....
I could be wrong.
He shouldn't be getting a goddamned pass from the likes of Kos, Jerome and Bowers that's for damn sure.
He shouldn't be getting a goddamned pass from the likes of Kos, Jerome and Bowers that's for damn sure.
I'll never understand why so many progressive bloggers give Obama a pass. Besides Matt Stoller, David Sirota Paul Streetand Paul Krugman, most of the netroots and left-leaning journalists are too mesmerized of the prospect of an Obama presidency. Not since Bill Clinton have I witnessed so many progressives making excuses after excuses explaining away a candidate's non-progressive platform and record. Eric Alterman said in an article last month that he doesn't know where Obama will take the country if elected president, but he's excited to go for the ride. That almost sounded like a giddy teenager eagerly anticipating to go on some drunken binge with his buddies. Moreover, I was awestruck by that statement because all one has to do in figuring out what Obama stands for is to carefully scrutinize his purple, let's-hold-hands-and-sing-Kumbaya speeches, safe voting record, and two vapid books to realize that Obama is your typical neoliberal politician. Many liberals know that Obama can bullshit with the best of them, but deep down inside, they're hoping that Obama is running a timid-to-vague campaign just to get elected, and once in office he'll govern as a progressive. I thought we learned this lesson from Bill Clinton in '92, however, it seems that the left is falling for it once again, for the simple fact we're so desperate to get back into the White House again.
In Adolph Reed, Jr's book "Class Note" he wrote a nice little paragraph about Obama when Obama first won his state senate seat. It pretty much summed up Obama's candidacy in a nutshell: "In Chicago, for instance, we've gotten a foretaste of the new breed of foundation-hatched black communitarian voices; one of them, a smooth Harvard lawyer with impeccable do-good credentials and vacuous-to-repressive neoliberal politics, has won a state senate seat on a base mainly in the liberal foundation and development worlds. His fundamentally bootstrap line was softened by a patina of the rhetoric of authentic community, talk about meeting in kitchens, small-scale solutions to social problems, and the predictable elevation of process over program -- the point where identity politics converges with old-fashioned middle class reform in favoring form over substance. I suspect that his ilk is the wave of the future in U.S. black politics here, as in Haiti and wherever the International Monetary Fund has sway. So far the black activist response hasn't been up to the challenge. We have to do better."
If want to understand Obama's real economic policy look at his 3 top advisers.
David Cutler, Austan Goolsbee and Jeffrey Liebman
You google them or use this site that provides a good thumbnail sketch of them and their policies:
http://politicalfleshfeast.com/showDiary.do?diaryId=1913
read it and weep.
waltc,
You forgot Robert Rubin who I think is the worst of the four.
As far as candidates going on faith, hope, etc ... goes, any candidate overusing or misusing religion to score points often has a sinister economic agenda waiting to be dumped on to the public.
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