Trade Deals Undermine Everything Obama Says He Stands For
By Matthew Pulver in Salon - After more than six years of Obama-era party discipline and general accord, Democrats are finally suffering a measure of intra-party strife as the president appeals to congress for “fast-track” authority to more or less unilaterally negotiate the still-secret terms of the Trans-Pacific Partnership, one of the largest trade pacts in history.
A bloc of Congressional Democrats have so far stymied the president and balked at his request, and leaders of the liberal wing of the party have engaged in fairly unprecedented public dispute with President Obama. The party’s quarrel has presented Hillary Clinton with her campaign’s first big dilemma, as the former secretary of state does an ugly political dance, trying to reconcile her previously full-throated advocacy of the now-nettlesome trade agreement with the progressive revolt of the party base to whom she’s appealing in the primaries.