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Senator Sherrod Brown. (photo: Tony Dejak/AP)
How Some Actual Progressives Blew the Whistle on Some Fake Ones
14 March 15
t seems possible now that, at the moment, the administration doesn't have the votes in the Senate to give the president fast-track authority to approve the Trans-Pacific Partnership, the noxious turkey of a trade deal the supporters of which assure us will lead us to pie in the sky by and by when we die. (I'm sure the benefits of the TPP to average Americans will come rolling in just as soon as the benefits from NAFTA do.) The way you know that it's in trouble is that some former members of the president's political team now are trying to lobby the turkey across the finish line.Tran didn't answer questions about who funds the group or who the coalition's members are. But she pushed back on the notion that the group lacks progressive bona fides.
"As you know, Mitch and I are serving as advisors to PCAJ —and we have spent our lives fighting to advance progressive ideals," she wrote. "We believe this effort is not only in line with our values — the same values that led us to fight to help pass the Affordable Care Act, overturn 'Don't Ask, Don't Tell,' and support President Obama's many other progressive policies — it's an incredible opportunity to make our world more just and more connected. Giving trade promotion authority to the president and enacting the TPP have the potential to do more to advance progressive ideals and values around the world than any other trade agenda in history."
We have a lot of fun here in the shebeen mocking Republicans for their fluency in weaselspeak and for their many conjuring words and spells, but it is on matters like trade that we see how seriously Democrats can hold their own with anyone. Read that astonishing bafflegab again. "An incredible opportunity to make our world more just and more connected." Has NAFTA made the world more just? And how has bleeding American manufacturing jobs "advanced progressive ideals and values" in Vietnam? In China? In Mexico, which is at the moment falling completely apart? For that matter, how has it "advanced progressive ideals" in the United States of America? Freedom's just another word for cheap plastic toys, I guess.
Senator Sherrod Brown and the other people deserve some serious props for blowing the whistle on this scam even though I'm sure they knew that the primary narrative in the elite political press was going to be "Dems In Disarray." Some things remain worth raising hell over, centrism be damned.
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